Autistic Resources in the Twin Cities
We return to our backyard with a story from WCCO Radio’s Edgar Linares on a store that sells products designed to help children and adults on the autism spectrum develop
Simply called The Autism Shop, owners Cherri and David Saltzman recently located their facility to the Sundial Center in Minnetonka because they couldn’t showcase all their products at their old location in Hopkins. Naturally, their inspiration originated with their daughter, diagnosed with autism at age 2 and now a full adult. Their quick action helped their daughter’s condition improve, but the Saltzmans wanted to continue supporting the autism community, which led to The Autism Shop, now in its 16th year of operation. Over 1,200 items are available to shoppers either in person or online, including books that help autistic children handle emotions and a line of CD’s created by a Minnesota speech pathologist. The Autism Shop is a non-profit business, with proceeds benefiting autism research and support.
Linares profiles what the store is all about, because even with 16 years of existence, knowledge of The Autism Shop in the Twin Cities media market is likely rather low given its sole location. His highlights of the store’s features play off the backbone of The Autism Shop moving to a bigger home. Although the move is reportedly done out of desire to showcase more products and generate more foot traffic, and no sales figures are given, it’s reasonable to deduce the shop is a hit with patrons who visit the store.
While organizations focused on autism, including the Autism Society of Minnesota, are likely to have resources for people involved with those groups, The Autism Shop is the first time I’ve heard of a Twin Cities location offering such resources in a public manner. Linares takes people unfamiliar with the store into consideration with his reporting by offering a quick history of the store and its owners, and in doing so, he effectively communicates that the Saltzmans are eager to help through the products they offer and the proceeds they donate. As the autistic population grows, so does the demand for material to help adapt to the population, which would etch dollar signs in the minds of some entrepreneurs. Instead, the Saltzmans go with the old adage of “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine.”
Profile stories have a lower difficulty level of reporting than other subjects, as the goal is simply featuring a noun to an audience that may not know what makes the noun special. Thanks to Linares’ storytelling, residents in Stillwater or Woodbury need not tremble over trekking a long distance to a western Twin Cities suburb, and citizens close by can browse through all 1,200 products in person. The only missing element that would have supplemented the story was getting testimonials from customers who could vouch for what the Saltzmans were saying. However, just like its television counterpart, the journalists in WCCO’s radio division are also on a short time limit when it comes to story length.
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