Fairmont Hampton Inn breakfast hostess named Head of House

The Minnesota Lodging Association honored five outstanding individuals, two lodging properties and an industry supplier at its gala awards ceremony on January 12, 2017 at the Sheraton Bloomington Hotel in Bloomington, Minnesota. Among those award recipients was local breakfast hostess Suzanne Sukalski.

​Suzanne was honored with the Head of the House Award which recognizes an hourly employee in the “front of the house” who demonstrates above average care and service to guests and co-workers.

Suzanne Sukalski began her job as Breakfast Hostess at the Hampton Inn in Fairmont in 2012. She came into the role after learning about the position in her Special Education Career Exploration class, which give students the ability to observe jobs at various businesses in the city of Fairmont. After observing various jobs in hotels and restaurants, Suzanne began to envision herself having a career in the hospitality industry and knew it was something she wanted to pursue after graduation.

Her graduation picture and plans for the future were posted in the Fairmont newspaper and caught the eye of Jason Subbert, the General Manager of the Hampton Inn Fairmont’s management company, TPI Hospitality. At Jason’s behest, Suzanne received an application to apply to the hotel through school and, after an exceptional interview, was offered the position only a few months after graduation.

Suzanne has really come into her own at her job. Working at the hotel has helped her realize that being part of the Hampton Inn Fairmont team means being a part of something that is bigger than herself. The teamwork of the hotel staff shows that no one’s job is small or insignificant; it takes everyone building off of one another to make the Hampton Inn Fairmont a successful business.

Suzanne tries every day to give each guest a special experience. Whether it’s wearing colorful aprons that she sewed herself, or creating greeting cards to distribute to guests with candy, she is always looking for ways to brighten her guests’ day and help them feel as comfortable as possible. Suzanne hopes to continue her job at the Hampton Inn Fairmont for as long as she can and she is incredibly grateful for her co-workers and the confidence they have helped instill in her over the last four years.

When accepting her award, Suzanne said, "I am so happy. This award is for my amazing team. Thank you for believing in me."

Good day sunshine

By Kaelyn Platz

This story first appeared in the September-October 2018 issue of Soybean Business. 

From a young age, Suzanne “Suzy” Sukalski learned to embrace the unexpected. After all, she is a farmer’s daughter.

“Things aren’t always what you expect them to be,” Suzy says. “Sometimes things are more wonderful than you could ever imagine.”

Suzy has Down Syndrome, but she doesn’t let that define her. She instead turns her genetic disorder into a strength and focuses on the abilities she has.

Growing up in southern Minnesota, Suzy was told what she can’t do instead of what she can. When she struggled to read in second grade, Suzy’s teacher told her she had no need to read.

In 5th grade, when all of her other classmates got to compete in the science fair, Suzy was not expected to participate because the teacher thought she wouldn’t care.

In 6th grade her entire class got to go skiing while she was asked to stay home because she wouldn’t know what she was missing.

“I know it takes me longer to learn new things,” she says. “I try my hardest, but it’s still frustrating.”

Despite being told no, Suzy has had a rock-solid support system. Her mother and father encouraged her to learn to read. She competed in the 5th grade science fair, and with the support of her family and volunteers, she learned to ski.

“Many doubted her abilities. Many doubted her desire to fit in,” says Diane Sukalski, Suzy’s mom. “Suzy had to have courage to overcome those doubts and those obstacles. She also needed strong support.”

Now Suzy shares her story in a PowerPoint, teaching others to focus on the abilities that people have to offer. She recently was the keynote speaker at the Minnesota Environmental Health Association conference, has presented to Cargill, high school and grade school students, rotaries and chambers of commerce. Her personal mission is to nourish the soul, celebrate abilities and inspire possibilities.

“It’s all about abilities and we all have different abilities,” says Suzy’s father, Lawrence Sukalski, a United Soybean Board director. “We couldn’t more proud of the person Suzy is.”

“Sunshine Suzy’s Super Crunchy Corn Nibblets” can be found at various locations around Fairmont, Minn., as well as on her website.

But Suzy’s story doesn’t stop there; she’s just getting started.

Suzy is a savvy entrepreneur. She labels and packages her own brand of Sunshine Suzy’s Super Crunchy Corn Nibblets. Suzy has been inspected and licensed by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to sell the corn nibblets.

“Sunshine Suzy’s Super Crunchy Corn Nibblets” can be found at various locations in Fairmont, Minn. These locations include: True Value, HyVee, Fareway, Sterling Drug, Center Creek Orchard, Green Giant Visitors’ Center and Hilton Honors at the Hampton Inn.

Anybody can order her corn nibblets online for wedding favors, graduation goodies and special giveaways for businesses. Her corn nibblets come in three different flavors: Ranch, sea salt, and barbeque.

“They’re really good” Diane says. “This business has become bigger than we thought. The wonderful community support has been instrumental in promoting her business expansion into surrounding states.”

Suzy is active within her community of Fairmont, Minn. She holds a position at the Hampton Inn as a breakfast hostess.

Jason Subbert, general manager of Torgerson Properties Inc. in Fairmont, met Suzy when she was in high school while she was taking a class sampling different jobs in the community. Subbert remembered Suzy when a breakfast hostess job opened at the Hampton Inn.

“I saw in the newspaper that Suzanne was graduating and thought she would be a good fit,” he says. “I went and saw what her future plans were and suggested applying for the job opening as a breakfast hostess.”

Suzanne has changed the way the staff help each other. They realized that although Suzy needed more training, their investment in Suzy was worth it in the end.

“Sometimes employers look at a challenge and look the other way because it will take more work,” Subbert says. “We took a challenge and worked with it to find the talents that Suzanne held.”

Suzy uses her creativity to have fun at her job. She asked her boss if it was okay if she wore fun aprons over her uniform. He said yes, and Suzy and her mother have designed different aprons for the different seasons. She has made over 30 aprons that she can wear to work.

Suzy also uses her abilities to make handmade seasonal cards for the guests of the hotel. From that, she receives many positive comment cards from the guests.

“People aren’t expecting to get that,” Subbert says. “It shows how well of a hostess she is and how much she cares about others.”

The Hampton Inn was ranked first in service for two months in a row out of the 1,200 Hampton Inns worldwide. Not only did Suzy contribute to these rankings, but she brought forth a change to the way the employees of the Hampton Inn go about their own jobs.

Suzanne Sukalski was awarded the Minnesota Lodging Association’s 2016 Head of the House award for excellence in service and care as a Hampton Inn breakfast hostess.

Suzy has helped lead the way through the process of helping others and has taught the Hampton Inn to build something and sustain it. As a result, the Hampton Inn now has hired another girl with Down Syndrome as a breakfast hostess.

Suzy’s efforts and upbeat demeanor have not gone unnoticed. In January 2017, she was honored with Minnesota Lodging Association’s Head of the House award. This award recognizes an employee who offers exceptional service and care to guests and co-workers.

“She surprises a person with what she can do,” Diane says. “She really is amazing.”

Despite the challenges Suzy has overcome, she continues to strive with a positive attitude, using her abilities to inspire others as a motivational speaker.

There’s no place for the dark in Suzy’s life. Only sunshine.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something,” she says. “You can do anything if you work hard.”

Family at the heart of farming operation

Article from the Minnesota Soybean Magazine | November 29, 2016 | Link to original article

The late Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

When Fairmont, Minn., farmer Lawrence Sukalski started his own farming operation in 1978 with 17 acres, there was no way that he could have seen the top of the staircase, or rather, the operation he would one day run.

What he could see was the support of his wife and his brother, Harlan, both of whom helped him branch out and grow their corn and soybean operation along the Minnesota-Iowa border.

“There were a lot of nights we slept with a cement pillow. The ’80s were tough,” Sukalski says. “But in the end you just try to do as well as you can and hope you’re successful and if you aren’t successful, at least you know you tried and did everything you could.

Help away from the farm

For the first years of his operation, Lawrence worked a full-time factory job in Fairmont making railroad maintenance equipment. The job allowed him to earn a steady wage while learning more about business.

Sukalski admits the 1980s were tough on farmers, and knows many people lost their operations. For some farmers, that meant an opportunity to expand, something he was fortunate enough to do.

“It was the equity I made in the job in town that allowed us to expand,” he says. “At one time, 54 percent of the acres we were farming came because others had to give it up because of hardship. The hard times created opportunities for some.”

He and his wife, Diane, also made other sacrifices, one of which carried long past the ’80s.

“You realize how difficult the ’80s were,” he said. “But we had a pretty nice place to live and we were renters for 28 years, and that was difficult. Diane didn’t necessarily like that. She wanted her own house. Not that renting is a hardship, but we bought land and equipment instead of a house.”

Fortunately, Lawrence says, Diane understood the need to pour resources into the farming operation. Her parents, George and Ruth Johnson, provided strong family farm values on their farm in neighboring East Chain Township.

As he watches his three sons and two daughters pitch in and help out on the farm despite each having full-time jobs, he can’t help but notice some similarities between his start that ventured through the ’80s and their start during a tough time with falling commodity prices.

“A good job in town is really like farming several hundred acres with a lot less effort and you don’t need all the machinery,” he says. “It’s a valuable thing right now.”

Family farm

Lawrence and Diane Sukalski raised five children while growing their farming operation with Harlan Sukalski. Lawrence, always the positive role model for his children, knew that above all else, his children’s future came above the needs of the farm.

“Around the farm there are always responsibilities and things that need to get done but when the children came home from school, I didn’t have any of their time until their homework was done,” he says. “Sometimes I didn’t see them that night out in the field or out in the yard. That was the one thing that never changed. They always came home with their papers, and Diane went through it with them and the homework was done before they went outside.”

Diane says that the children were responsible for other reasons than just her perseverance with their homework.

The Sukalski’s youngest child, Suzy, was born with Down Syndrome.

“I think the kids all matured quicker because of the responsibilities they took on for her care and education,” she says. “They realized they had their abilities. They had that extra gift to be thankful for. With Suzy we focused on her abilities, not her disabilities. That has gotten her farther, too.”

Diane says every family member is heavily involved in a wide variety of community service activities, possibly as a result of their deep gratitude for the services Suzy has received.

Lawrence says their role with Suzy definitely helped them mature, but he credits his children’s success and his farming success to Diane’s dedication to family.

“Managing that end of it and keeping them successful and their heads clear and out of trouble made it a lot easier for me to spend more time concentrating on the farm,” he says.

Trusting in a higher power

During those lean years in the ’80s, Diane says she drew strength from Lawrence’s faith in God, and his positive attitude.

“Lawrence, if we were having a tough time, he didn’t voice those concerns,” she says. “He didn’t want anybody else to have that stress, so I never thought we were having difficulty. We have always been conservative with resources and money, so Lawrence didn’t have to tell me to cut back. We just kept our nose to the grindstone and kept moving forward. That’s all you can do and try to find the positive in every day.”

Lawrence says his parents instilled values in him that he trusts to this day.

“They raised nine children on 140 acres,” he says. “They taught us how to pray and they taught us how to work.”

For Sukalski, he’s confident his children are on the right track.

“What I see them doing more than anything is doing research and looking at opportunities and asking what should we do? Should we sell? Should we hang on? Should we look at doing something different?”

His parting wisdom for when times get tough is simple: “Things turn out for the best when we make the best of the way things turn out.”

Diane prefers to defer to the wisdom of musician Steven Wilson: “Your best harvest may be the pleasure you get from working with family and friends. There’s never a shortage of things to do, no limit to the lessons that can be learned, especially for children, and there’s always plenty of credit to go around, even for the mistakes.”

Local woman wears many hats

Article from the Fairmont Sentinel | July 5, 2016

Suzanne Sukalski wears many hats. She’s a valued employee at Fairmont’s Hampton Inn. Her job as breakfast hostess requires her to greet guests, keep all the items for the morning meal stocked and complete clean-up chores at the end of her shift.

She’s a philanthropist. She bought a popcorn machine which she takes to weddings and community events, donating her proceeds to a program that helps people with disabilities find jobs.

She’s an artist, displaying her creativity by making a variety of work aprons with seasonal and holiday themes. She also gives each Hampton Inn guest a personally designed and signed card, wishing them a good day and including a candy treat.

And she is a public speaker, presenting a Power Point presentation to various organizations and businesses, including the corporate offices of Cargill.

That’s a pretty impressive resume for a 23-year-old woman with Down Syndrome.

Her most recent endeavor took her to Anoka to visit a third-grade class at St. Stephen’s Catholic School. Suzy, as she prefers to be called, was featured last fall in a Minneapolis Star Tribune article about adults with disabilities and the jobs available to them. Betty Kowalski’s class at St. Stephen’s had just finished studying about the dignity and rights of workers so they sent cards of encouragement to Suzy and to her employer.

“We just sent the letters and thought that was that,” Kowalski said. “To our surprise, she responded back.”

Suzy had sent each of the 22 students a Christmas ornament she had made. The class reciprocated by sending her cards for Christmas and Valentine’s Day.

In early April, Suzy traveled to Anoka with her mother, Diane, and sister, Kristina, to personally meet the class and give her Power Point presentation.

“Suzy just made our year,” Kowalski said. “What we received was just head over heels beyond what we ever thought. Just the kindness that she and her family showed to the third graders was something we all felt. I know Suzy impacted us in so many ways.”

Kowalski said her young students don’t fully grasp disabilities.

“When we talked about disabilities, they did not recognize the disabilities in their own class,” she said, adding that one student is on the autistic scale. “That was so cool to me. They just accept everybody for what they bring to the table.”
What Suzy brings to the table at the Hampton Inn is pretty amazing.

“It’s been a long process, but it’s been very good,” said Jason Subbert, general manager of Torgerson Properties Inc. in Fairmont, which includes the Hampton Inn. “There’s been a lot of people involved. There’s been a lot of people that have helped get us there. It’s just a fantastic story.”

Suzy’s job was designed to be sustainable. She does not have a job coach so her employment isn’t vulnerable to governmental budget cuts.

“It needed to be something that can stand on its own and last,” Subbert said.

The Hampton Inn staff had to engage and help Suzy differently or more directly than they would other associates, and Subbert credits them for guidance, support and feedback.

“We had to learn more about how to work with somebody with disabilities than the person with disabilities needed to learn how to work with us,” he said. “We learned that we need to be open to coaching and development, what adjustments we need to make and not just force them to comply. Probably the biggest surprise for me was how our staff started helping each other differently because of how they had to help Suzanne differently. You end up with a much more hospitable atmosphere.”

By changing the process of how they did their daily work, the Hampton Inn staff received recognition from the hotel guests and from the industry. In January and February 2014, the hotel ranked at the top of the 1,200 Hampton Inns worldwide based on guest ratings.

“Suzanne was part of the team that accomplished that, and I don’t think that would have happened without changing the process of how we were doing our daily work,” Subbert said. “That elevated everything. It was the entire team helping the entire team differently that drove us to that high level of change and, ultimately, how we help our guests because that’s who rates your service.”

Of the 220 Torgerson employees at the Fairmont properties, Subbert said Suzanne leads the pack with the number of comment cards completed by guests.

“She only works two or three days a week, and we still get more positive comments on her than any other person,” he said.

One of those cards was completed by a Mr. Bennett whose interaction with Suzy was so memorable, he sent his comments four months after his stay. He’d had a long day on the road and woke up the next morning dreading another long day. While he was eating breakfast at the Hampton Inn, Suzy handed him one of her handmade cards, wishing him a good day.

“After reading the card and remembering her smile, it totally changed my day for the better,” Bennett wrote. “Good job to the management for hiring Suzanne and for her vision to impact other lives.”

Suzy talks about her life and her job in her Power Point presentation.

“I love my job,” she said. “I make lots of money, but it’s more than just money. I have learned many new skills. I am learning more about myself and what I can do. I am proud to be part of their team.”

She motivates others to challenge themselves.

“Believe in yourself, and be proud of who you are. There is no one else like you,” she said.

Suzy offers advice that she lives by. She encourages people to smile and shake hands. She tells people that sometimes you have to do hard things, but not to be afraid. Ask for help, and be ready to help others.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. You can do anything if you work hard,” she said.

Suzy is grateful for her family’s support, and she loves her life on the farm with her mom, her father, Lawrence, and her dog, Howard.

“Even though Suzy has Down Syndrome, it certainly does not define her,” Diane said. “She is an example of someone who is thriving in the workplace. We’re just grateful they gave her this opportunity, and the co-workers all make it work. Suzy has made a visible positive impact at her company and its guests.”

In fact, Diane said, some guests, when they make reservations, ask if Suzy will be working during their stay.

Even though Suzy’s smile and personality have brightened her workplace, the influence she had over the young Anoka students is immeasurable.
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“At that age, they’re so impressionable,” Diane said. “When they become the managers, the employers, the owners, they hopefully will have Suzy in their mind.”

Pen pals meet, share stories, create special bond

Article from the Anoka Herald | April 19, 2016

With a sunny smile and unbridled enthusiasm 23-year-old Suzy Sukalski makes arts and crafts projects, sews aprons and works as a breakfast hostess at the Hampton Inn in Fairmont, Minnesota.

​She doesn’t let her Downs Syndrome slow her down or stifle her sunny disposition. ​

Letters from St. Stephen’s Catholic School third-graders boost her spirits even more so she was happy to come visit them at school.

And so, traveling with her mother, Diane and sister Kristina O’Brien Suzy travelled April 8 from her home in Fairmont to St. Stephen’s in Anoka.

Eager to finally meet her “pen pal angels” Suzy giggled and grinned as the students filed into the classroom.

Several months ago, Betty Kowalski’s third-graders connected with Suzy after reading a newspaper article about her work at the Hampton Inn and studying a course about the dignity of work and the rights of workers.

“We sent cards of encouragement (to her),” Kowalski said.

“We wrote thank you letters to her for working,” said Max Berglund, one of Kowalski’s students.

“I wrote a lot of ‘God bless yous,’ too,” said Max’s classmate, Evie Williams.

And then, Suzy wrote back.

“At Christmas time, Suzy surprised us with a thank you letter and ornaments she had made for each of my students. As the year rolled on we sent her Christmas and Valentine cards and she started to call us her ‘pen pal angels,’” Kowalski said.

During her visit to St. Stephen’s Suzy gave a presentation and slide show to the students, telling them about her work at the Hampton Inn, describing the arts and crafts projects she likes to do and the aprons she sews with her mother.

She began her presentation by telling the students “you have great potential. You have great abilities. My question to you is ‘How will you use them?’”

Later, she urged the students to “believe in yourself and be proud of who you are.”

“Challenges are opportunities,” she told them. “Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do something – you can do anything if you work hard.”

Kowalski said exchanging letters with Suzy, hearing her story and witnessing the simple delight she has for life is something her students will cherish years to come.

“This is something that has taught them understanding, appreciation and compassion. It’s something they will keep with them for many years,” she said.

After finishing her presentation to the students, Suzy and her “pen pal angels” made a craft project and then went outside for recess where Suzy surprised them with a fun balloon game and giant soap bubbles.
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“They will remember this a very long time and I hope to be able to keep up with Suzy with letters and find out how she’s doing years down the road. This is a very special relationship and we are so glad to meet her,” Kowalski said.