A6
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 2021
Vouchers: People
must fi t guidelines
for emergency help
Continued from Page A1
Malia Riggs/For The Astorian
Miss Emerald Valley Abigail Hayes reacts after being crowned Miss Oregon.
Miss Oregon: Teens will compete in Orlando
Continued from Page A1
The fi ve-person judging
panel included publisher Neal
Robbins; 2008 Miss Oregon
Danijela Radeta; former Miss
Idaho pageant director Gene
Hill; writer and artist Mary
Anne Radmacher; and Sea-
side Chamber of Commerce
CEO Brian Owen.
Judges selected fi ve fi nal-
ists out of 18 entrants based
on Thursday and Friday pre-
liminaries, onstage inter-
views, red carpet perfor-
mance and talent.
Along with Hayes, the
fi nalists included Miss City
of Roses Allison Burke,
of Tigard; Miss Evergreen
Claire Sparks, of Beaver-
ton; Miss Tri-Valley Danielle
Cormier, of Wilsonville; and
Miss Portland-Metro Sophia
Takla, of Portland.
Miss Clatsop County
Haylie Moon, from Can-
non Beach, was named non-
fi nalist interview winner and
received a $250 scholarship.
“This is my fi nal year com-
peting as a m iss contestant,”
she said. “I could not have
done anyone more proud.
I’m so proud of myself. I’m
so proud of this community
of women and the sisterhood.
And I absolutely love com-
peting in this program.”
Miss North Coast Cait-
lin Hillman, of Gearhart, said
she felt great about the pag-
eant. “I’m really just happy
to be here,” she said . “This
is my fi rst time competing in
the m iss division, so it was
great to be able to represent
the North Coast and be here
and meet so many amazing
women. I’m very excited for
Abigail. She’s going to be an
amazing Miss Oregon.”
Earlier Saturday, rein-
ing titleholder Marin Gray
passed the Miss Oregon
Outstanding Teen crown to
Moira O’Bryan, of Coos Bay,
one of 11 teen contestants.
“It’s pretty exciting,” Beth
McShane, the program’s
executive director, said.
“Coos County is one of our
oldest, best local programs,
and they have their fi rst state
titleholder.”
Teens will compete in
Orlando next month.
As the winner , Hayes will
receive a $10,000 scholar-
ship and in-kind scholarship
contributions from the Sher-
man College of Chiroprac-
tic. She will participate in the
Miss America competition in
December at Mohegan Sun
in Connecticut.
In her fi nal interview
question, Hayes was asked
how she would build stronger
relationships with local busi-
nesses and sponsors.
“Looking at the 75th anni-
versary of Miss Oregon,
what better brand than for
our brand to be hope,” Hayes
said. “After a year of coming
out with political tension and
global pandemic I believe it’s
very important that we pro-
duce hope, and as Miss Ore-
gon, it is my mission to help
involve other organizations
... and letting them know
what this organization is truly
about.”
Her fi rst act as Miss
Oregon?
“I’m going to go hug my
parents and cry,” she said.
Krizo: ‘This is what I’ve always wanted to do’
the Scott River Lodge in Fort
Jones, California, and The
Crooked Ram in Manches-
ter, Vermont, among other
destinations.
Krizo and his wife, Abby,
live with their two boys, Jon-
athan, 16, and Samuel, 11, in
Seaside. They met in Cannon
Beach when she was working
as business manager at the
Ecola Bible College.
Continued from Page A1
faith and your culinary skills
in the industry,” Krizo said.
‘You are not a pilot’
Krizo grew up on the bor-
der of California and Oregon,
a mile from the small town
of Tule Lake, on his family’s
horseradish and barley farm.
To overcome shyness, he
took public speaking courses
and joined the Future Busi-
ness Leaders of America in
high school. He was also
deathly afraid of heights, so
he conquered that by attend-
ing aeronautical school.
“When I was young, I was
really shy and it was hard for
me to talk to anyone,” Krizo
said. “One thing that I’ve
always had is drive. If I have
any challenges, that becomes
my main focus, not in a neg-
ative way, but in a positive
way.”
After graduating , he went
to Embry-Riddle Aeronau-
tical University in Prescott,
Arizona, to become a com-
mercial airline pilot. A side
job waiting tables sidetracked
his fl ight career after he
accepted a job as a cook at the
Sheraton resort in Prescott.
While he had diffi cult
moments — the sous-chef
didn’t like him much and
sometimes Krizo got knives
thrown at him — the industry
grew on him. “I kept fi nding
I had much more passion for
the cooking and not as much
for the fl ying,” he said. “Basi-
cally, God said, ‘You are not
a pilot.’”
Krizo attended T he Culi-
nary Institute of America in
Hyde Park, New York, where
he learned being a chef was a
career, not just a job.
He studied in Paris and
worked at premier Italian
restaurants in Sydney, Aus-
tralia, before returning to the
United States as lead line
cook at a Bertrand’s, a fi ne
dining French restaurant in
San Diego.
Krizo started Christian
Chefs International in 1998,
developing a curriculum and
teaching culinary arts for
what would become a life-
time of instruction.
Krizo owned the Pinehurst
Inn and White Pine Restau-
rant, a fi ne-dining bed-and-
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merk-
ley, an Oregon Democrat,
said, “It’s impossible to
thrive without a safe and
aff ordable roof over your
head. I’ve been pushing for
strong responses to meet
the housing crisis so many
(of our ) families are fac-
ing, and that have become
even more dire during the
pandemic, and these grants
are a good piece of the
solution. I will continue
to do all I can to secure
the resources we need to
weather this pandemic and
make sure all of Oregon’s
families have a home they
can aff ord.”
The Northwest Oregon
Housing Authority will
administer the vouchers to
people referred by a social
services agency in each
county. Clatsop Commu-
nity Action, which operates
the regional food bank and
provides housing, energy
assistance and other criti-
cal services to low-income
people, will make referrals
in Clatsop County.
The housing authority
put a freeze on issuing new
vouchers last year as part of
a corrective action plan to
get from “troubled” to what
HUD calls a “standard per-
former.” HUD defi ned the
housing authority as trou-
bled in January 2020 fol-
lowing an audit report of
the housing choice voucher
program.
More than 480 house-
holds are on the waiting
list for vouchers in Clatsop
County. Most households
on the waiting list are peo-
ple who are single, elderly
and disabled.
The emergency hous-
ing vouchers will not be
administered to people on
the waiting list. People
must fi t the guidelines for
the emergency help and be
referred by Clatsop Com-
munity Action.
“NOHA is looking for-
ward to working with our
exceptional
community
partners, CAT (Commu-
nity Action Team), CARE
(Community
Action
Resource Enterprises) and
CCA to expand the sup-
ply of aff ordable housing,”
Nina Reed, the chairwoman
of the housing authority’s
board of commissioners,
said in an email. “This is a
great opportunity to engage
our services with theirs and
build new relationships!”
Covid: 2,756 deaths
from the virus statewide
Continued from Page A1
He said none of the cases
tied to workplaces have
reached the state’s thresh-
old for disclosure, which is
fi ve for workplaces with 30
or more employees.
The county declined to
provide any more informa-
tion about the cases.
As of Monday , the
health
authority
has
reported 206,850 cases and
2,756 deaths from the virus
statewide.
facebook.com/DailyAstorian
Cooking amid the
pandemic
R.J. Marx/The Astorian
Ira and Abby Krizo at the Christian Culinary Academy.
breakfast southeast of Ash-
land. “We got all sorts of
great reviews, newspaper
articles, but the lease came
up and it wasn’t viable to pur-
chase it,” he said.
He joined a large cater-
ing company in Portland,
Catering at Its Best, as head
chef. B ut throughout, Krizo
believed his end goal would
be a culinary school.
“I believe that God has
spoken to me many times.
One of the times, it was so
clear it might as well have
been an audible voice,” Krizo
said. “I knew that I was going
one day to be a part of some-
thing like that to train others.”
Faith-based cooking
He responded to an invi-
tation to relocate to the North
Coast in 2013 and started the
Christian Culinary Academy.
“The door opened up to come
here, and here we are,” Krizo
said.
He rents the facility from
the Christian Conference
Center.
“It is not a Bible col-
lege- seminary
culinary
school,” Krizo said. “It is a
culinary school preparing
students to be professionals
in the industry that they’re
called to. Many students go
into fi ne dining.”
The program features a
classical curriculum, with the
participation of “The Gallop-
ing Gourmet” Graham Kerr
and global master chef Karl
Guggenmos on the school’s
advisory board.
“We start off with knife
skills and we get into soups,
stocks, sauces and then cook-
ing methods of diff erent pro-
teins, meat, fi sh, poultry, sea-
food, vegetables, starches ...
we get into salads, appetiz-
ers and desserts and breads,”
Krizo said.
Guest instructors come
from restaurants along the
coast or fl y in from other
locations. “Today we had
chef Tyler Benson,” Krizo
said. “He actually spent quite
a bit of time in Sri Lanka.”
While most students come
from the West, aspiring chefs
come from throughout the
United States and the school
is approved to accept interna-
tional students . Most culinary
schools operate fi ve hours a
day, fi ve days a week. The
academy is fi ve days a week,
eight hours a day, enabling
students to fi ll a two-year
curriculum into a one-year
program.
Many graduates go on to
Christian conference cen-
ters, Krizo said. Local restau-
rants who have hired grad-
uates include the Stephanie
Inn, the Wayfarer, Sea Level
Bakery + Coff ee and Dough
Dough Bakery. Nationally,
students from this year’s
graduating class are headed
to the Glen Eyrie Castle in
Colorado Springs, Colorado,
During the pandemic,
career colleges were consid-
ered essential, Krizo said, and
the academy did not get shut
down.
“When COVID-19 hit a
year ago, one of the things
that kept me up all night was
what can we do to not be a
circumstance of what’s going
on, but what can we do to
make a diff erence,” he said.
Students made hundreds
of loaves daily, distributing
them to food banks. When
their annual chef’s dinner,
typically held in the institute’s
dining room, was canceled
due to the pandemic, they
pivoted to takeout from Cafe
Dieu, with food prepared by
student chefs and available
from the North Coast Family
Fellowship in Seaside.
“The only thing the pan-
demic changed for us is that
it opened the door for us to
be more of a support to the
community through produc-
ing food for the food bank
and blessing the commu-
nity with our Cafe Dieu take-
out events,” he said. “With
how well those have been
received, we plan to continue
both of those after the pan-
demic is over.”
Before a recent dinner,
reservations were fi lled a
week ahead of time. A wait-
ing list fi lled up and the acad-
emy’s student chefs served
150 guests.
Krizo is looking forward
to fall. “We are excited about
all the applications that have
already come in,” he said.
There are still some spaces
left.
“This is what I’ve always
wanted to do,” Krizo said.
“Now that I’m doing it,
I always want to get bet-
ter. There’s always room for
improvement.”
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