Spotlight on Success: Luke Harabor

Luke Harabor is from Iasi, Romania and is deaf. He became deaf at the age of one when he was badly sunburned and received an injection as part of the treatment. He went home with his mother after the treatment. They were talking and all of a sudden he could not hear. Doctors suspected Harabor's hearing loss was caused by the injection.

After living in France for a while, Harabor attended art school in London. Then he moved to the United States, where he lived in Ohio, but friends told him he should move to Minnesota. He visited the Twin Cities to decide if he liked it. He did, so he went back to Ohio, retrieved his belongings and relocated to the Twin Cities.

Harabor got help finding a job from Vocational Rehabilitation (a division of Minnesota Rehabilitation Services) and the Minnesota Employment Center.

He called about a job opening at Home Depot and he was eventually hired as part of the Deaf2Work program. Based on a model program from Georgia, the Deaf2Work program facilitates the adaptation of hiring procedures to enable people who are deaf or hard of hearing to apply for jobs at Home Depot. Harabor went through two days of training. An interpreter helped him with the computer training. He now works as a Receiving Associate. He tracks when products come in, the amount of each product received, and then puts the product in the correct area. He was relieved to get this job after having been turned down several times. Harabor has been at Home Depot since March 2006.

Harabor likes his job, "The people are nice and there is variety in what I do. I look forward to coming to work every day."

Harabor's goals are to make more friends and, in a few years, go back to school to upgrade his skills in graphic design.