When you step inside Sugar Plum Bakery, the luscious aroma of vanilla, chocolate and buttercream surrounds you, Virginia Beach resident Katelyn Hawker is buying some of these decadent dalights for her wedding. We tried the brownies. I love chocolate, and then my flancé really liked the lemon bar,” she said. The Laskin Road bakery opened in 1987, founded in 1985 by a couple who had a daughter with a disability. They wanted her to have an opportunity to learn some job skills and work,” said Trish Clark, the bakery’s executive director.

“They wanted her to have an opportunity to learn some job skills and work,” said Trish Clark, the bakery’s longtime manager. “They felt like she could do a lot even though she had an intellectual disability.”

So the bakery became a nonprofit, hiring others in the community with disabilities.

Clark has been the manager for nearly 25 years, watching people who’ve been told they can’t succeed become top-notch workers and bakers.