Sherry Meng, owner, stands next to embroidery machines at Turtleworks in Campbell, Calif., on Wednesday, May 1, 2024. Turtleworks founded in 2020 by Cupertino resident Sherry Meng and partners with local school districts and nonprofits that help out adult students with special needs. In Campbell, a turtle and an embroidery shop share a common thread: they are used by a small business to support people with disabilities like autism.
Although only a handful of employees and interns work consistently on orders, the business collaborates with nearby Fremont Union, Campbell Union and Los Gatos-Saratoga Union high school districts to recruit adults with disabilities to help. They are paid by the school districts for their time. Intern Maya Rumale found out about Turtleworks through her special education program at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino. Since October 2023, the senior, who has special needs, has been coming into the office twice a week to clean up supplies, cut thread backings off of finished pieces and load embroidery hoops.
She decided to take her ideas outside of the nonprofit world and opened the Turtleworks office in 2020, right before Santa Clara County’s pandemic shelter-in place orders took effect. For the past two years Kristi Saso, president of the San Jose-based commercial maintenance company Pro-Sweep, has used Turtleworks to embroider her company’s logo onto different caps, shirts and jackets.“Anything that has a company logo on it, at this point Sherry is responsible,” the Los Gatos resident said, using Meng’s first name.