Mary Schmich: A hip bakery where the bakers are homeless

Mary Schmich: A hip bakery where the bakers are homeless
Mary Schmich
October 31, 2008
Meet the cast of characters of the Sweet Miss Givings Bakery.

•Stan Sloan, 45, idea mastermind, a tanned Episcopal priest who wears a black leather jacket and grooves on Madonna.

•Stephen Smith, 28, chief operating officer, Harvard grad who just moved back to town with a master's degree from the London School of Economics.

•Kristi Gorsuch, 30ish, head baker, who earned her pastry degree at a school of the Cordon Bleu.

And the bakery's interns, among them:

•Mary Pelts, 44, 5th-grade graduate whose birth certificate, she says, carries the words "female pelvis" where a name should have gone, who was diagnosed with HIV in 2001 and never had a job except street hustling until she came to Sweet Miss Givings.

•Stanley Long Bey, 44, who was diagnosed with HIV the year he finished high school, who spent half his adult life in prison, and who, when he finally got out, had nowhere to sleep but parks and sidewalks.

Since last week when Mayor Daley snipped the ribbon, Reverend Stan, Stephen, Kristi, Mary, Stanley and a dozen others have come to work at this little brick factory off Division Street near the Chicago River.
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