Tim Harris has Down Syndrome. He also owns and operates his own restaurant, Tim’s Place in Albuquerque, which is known around town as the “world’s friendliest restaurant.” It’s easy to see why. “We serve breakfast, lunch and hugs,” Tim said in a video created by AOL (although just last week the restaurant also started serving dinner). “The hugs are the best part.” Every morning, Harris gets up at 5:30 a.m. and literally dances his way to work. Every customer who comes through the doors at Tim’s Place is greeted by the hands-on owner, who introduces himself and pulls them into a big hug. In Harris’s eyes, it’s the hugs that make the place special. “The hugs are way more important than the food,” he says. When he was a kid, Harris told his mom and dad, Keith and Jeannie, that he wanted to run a restaurant. As he got older, his parents recognized that this was a dream that wasn’t going away. Now, Tim’s Place is a family affair. Harris’s dad helped him get the business started, and his older brother Dan is the restaurant’s operations manager. As far as the family knows, Harris is the only person with Down syndrome to run a restaurant in the U.S., but they hope he won’t be the last. “I did not let my disability crush my dreams,” Harris says. “People with disabilities, they can do anything they set their mind to. We’re a gift to the world.”
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Tag: hugs
When This 82-Year-Old Helps the Homeless, All He Asks for Is a Hug
Every Wednesday afternoon, 82-year-old Anthony “Joe the Barber” Cymerys heads to Bushnell Park in Hartford, Conn., with nothing more than a folding chair and a duffel bag full of his special tools. For the past 25 years, he’s been dolling out free haircuts to the homeless men and women who frequent the park, and all he asks for in return is a hug. Cymerys, a retired real estate investor who learned how to cut hair from his dad when he was growing up, got the idea to provide free haircuts for the homeless when he was volunteering at a shelter in 1988. He met a heroin addict named Arnold who was badly in need of a haircut, so he offered his services. After that, his mobile barbershop was born.
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Last June, city health officials forced Cymerys to leave the park after some residents expressed concerns about the safety and sanitation of his services. But the mayor, Pedro Segarra, quickly gave him a special dispensation, along with a proposition: the city would help him obtain a state barber’s license, if he wanted one. (No word yet on whether he’s taken them up on that). The following Wednesday, “Joe the Barber” returned to his spot in the park, and dutifully trimmed the hair of his clients, to whom he’s become quite close. “They’re my family,” Cymerys told CBS News. “They really are my family.”
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