Cyndy Dominguez, 20, attends Sobesky Academy in Lakewood and is participating in Children’s Hospital Colorado’s Project Search Program, which teaches young people with developmental disabilities who are nearing the end of their high school careers the skills they need to work. She has a cognitive disability that makes it more difficult for her to learn new things quickly. She is interning at the hospital to gain job experience. For her internship, Dominguez takes the vitals of patients, cleans the exam rooms and performs many other jobs usually handled by medical assistants. Her goal is to live an independent and successful life.

If you knew me, you would know ...

“They didn’t find my disability until I was a freshman in high school. The put me on a ton of meds for ADHD, but it wasn’t that. It’s cognitive. And then my life changed. How I learn has changed. I feel like I got more support to learn in the way I learn best — being shown and talked to during the process just to make sure I do it right.

“I’ve been in Project Search just for a few months, but I’ve been in transition for three years. JeffCo Transition Services is for young adults with a disability to job train, budget and teach them how to do cooking and cleaning.

“I want to be a CNA (certified nurse assistant) and maybe an RN (registered nurse). I want to take classes and find good classes that will help me how to do stuff. I maybe want to go to college in the future, I’m not sure. I want to get my own apartment in Arvada and get my driver’s license.”

How I want to change the world

“I did a summer job at a retirement home and I just fell in love with it because I was helping the elderly and taking them to the bathroom and giving them baths and talking to them. I just like helping people ... That made me feel like I was helping patients and learning more about medicine and how to not just be a standby person. I liked that feeling of helping people and this job will give me a good point of view in the medical career.

“I want to help people and to demonstrate all of us can help out in the world, too. Just be patient with us. Don’t think we can’t do everything you guys do ... some of us can’t, but most of us can. All of us can’t be independent all of the time and all of us need support.”

Why my voice is important

“We are still figuring out life. The older generation needs to be more patient with us because we are still figuring it out. We do the same things they have been through ... It makes them aware about how people with a disability don’t get everything they say and it kind of puts them in our shoes. To teach them how to actually talk to us and not get mad easily. If they try to tell us what to do really fast, sometimes we can’t.”