CARLITO TRASK DEFTLY NAVIGATES tables in the crowded dining room of Escondido Santa Fe. The 28-year-old busser and food runner doesn’t shy away from talking with customers about his ankle monitor, tattoos, or life behind bars.
Formerly imprisoned in New Mexico for drug trafficking and other crimes, Trask was one of the first employees hired by Escondido’s chef and owner, Fernando Ruiz, to work in the Mexican restaurant that opened in August. “He’s changed my life,” Trask says. “He doesn’t judge me about my past and the things that I’ve done and how I look. That makes you feel good and want to show up for work every day.”
Ruiz, a three-time Food Network champion, is no stranger to struggle and second chances. Growing up in Phoenix, Ruiz was in a gang and trafficking guns and drugs by age 13. He’d been arrested twice by age 18. His time in one of Maricopa County’s infamous tent cities, where he landed a job in the prison kitchen, changed his life. After release, Ruiz went to culinary school and worked at Santacafé and other decorated New Mexico restaurants.
This year, Ruiz co-founded the nonprofit Entrepreneurial Institute of Northern New Mexico with community activist and former inmate Ralph Martinez. The friends were chatting when Ruiz raised the question: “How can we build a nonprofit so I can teach culinary skills to ex-convicts, people at risk, on probation, on parole, or maybe inside of the prison so that when they get out, they’re ready to be employed in restaurants throughout New Mexico?”
Fernando Ruiz, a three-time Food Network champion and reformed ex-gang member, teaches culinary and professional skills to former inmates and at-risk individuals.
Martinez loved the idea. The duo partnered with Jamai Blivin, co-founder of workforce training nonprofit Innovate + Educate, to create an eight-week, state-accredited reentry culinary and professional skills program. With a $75,000 state grant as seed money, they approached the New Mexico Corrections Department’s reentry division. “They said, ‘We love this program, and we want it in the state penitentiary,’ ” recalls Ruiz, who hopes to get it into all the state prisons.
Ruiz and Martinez held a four-week trial version at the Kitchen Table Santa Fe in April. They planned for a cohort of 12, but 25 signed up, including four on probation, a couple on parole, and several at high risk in their late teens and early 20s.
The full eight-week initiative started at the Penitentiary of New Mexico in May with 10 handpicked individuals. Three days a week, Ruiz taught them to prepare soups and sauces, butcher meat, calculate recipes and yields, and many other skills—all while attempting to open Escondido. “I thought, How am I going to do that when I’m trying to do this?” he says. “But then the opening got delayed due to construction, so it all worked out.”
All 10 students completed their training and have less than a year left of incarceration. “They’re pretty much guaranteed a job at Escondido or one of the other 25 restaurants in New Mexico participating in the program,” Ruiz says. “It’s a great feeling when the prison is accepting of this program. Because when I was in prison, what they’d say is: ‘I’ll see you when you get back.’ ”
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