PALO ALTO — Pick a date, any date in history, and Joe Cintas can tell you, with only a moment’s pause, what day of the week it was.
Diagnosed with autism at age 3, Cintas wields astonishing brain power when it comes to numbers and finding patterns, but, like many with his disability, his talents often have been overlooked in the workplace. Despite having a college degree in environmental studies, he spent the past 14 years pushing carts as a grocery store clerk before finding his niche at SAP, where he makes good money testing medical software for bugs. Read more.

Seth Shulman is a staff editor and post-production supervisor at Futures Explored Practical Film & Media Workshop in Sacramento, California, one of four film production workshops where film director Joey Travolta serves as a consultant. Elliot works as an assistant editor and classroom aide with Futures Explored Livermore Film Workshop. Jordan, a regular camper at Travolta’s Short-Films Camp, is now a freshman in college.
All three, diagnosed with developmental disabilities, were part of the special ed system. All three attribute much of their success to the arts, especially filmmaking. Read More.

The Rising Tide car wash in Parkland, Florida has hired 35 employees whose stellar quality is that they have autism.

“We view autism as one of our competitive advantages,” said the company’s COO Tom D’Eri. “They have a great eye for detail.”

“There are really important skills that people with autism have, that make them, in some cases, the best employees you could have.” To see Rising Tide on YouTube click here:  Rising Tide Car Wash

Stephanie Eppert and her daughter, Jessie, celebrated with a rare treat of ice cream last fall when news arrived that overtime and the minimum wage would be paid to in-home health-care workers.But the celebration was short-lived. Eppert — a single mother who takes care of her daughter, who has Down syndrome – Read more 

When Mazen and Holly Baayoun needed day care for their 2-year-old daughter, they wrote three pages of questions for staff at the facilities they visited. They wanted to know not only about the curriculum and recent accidents, but also how far the fire department is from the facility. In the end, they chose Sierra School in Santa Clarita, California, for its strong academic focus.

Less than two months later, the Baayouns’ daughter had a black eye when they picked her up at school. Read more.

Adding to confusion about the roots of autism, new research suggests that varying genes are often re- sponsible for the disorder even among siblings who share a diagnosis.

Kids who have an older bother or sister with autism are known to be at higher risk for the developmental disorder and scientists have thought this heightened occurrence was due to shared genes. Read more.

California’s Medi-Cal program has grown to cover nearly half of the state’s children, causing policymakers and child advocates to question the ability of the taxpayer-funded program to adequately serve so many poor kids.

In the past two years alone, the program has added nearly 1 million young people up to age 20, including those newly eligible for Medi-Cal coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The increase brings the total number of young people on Medi-Cal to 5.2 million, more than ever before. Read more.