When Scott Rubin goes to work at Boca Raton Regional Hospital’s dining hall, he runs the dishwasher and prepares trays to be loaded with meals. His other job is with a manufacturing company making security tags. To get to work, he rides his bike to the bus, which includes crossing Military Trail. Sometimes he takes the Palm Tran.
As an adult living with autism, Scott has made strides further than his doctors ever imagined. “He’s so proud of himself at work; he loves it,” says his mother, Michelle Rubin. “He’s learned skills like if you’re going to be late, you call your boss. If it’s thundering and lightning, you don’t go stand at the bus stop.”
It’s been Michelle’s mission to make this level of independence a reality for other adults with autism. Through her nonprofit, Autism After 21, adults with autism who have aged out of the school system have the opportunity to prepare for the workforce and learn life skills. Its signature program is SOAR (Summer Opportunity for Adult Readiness), a sort of summer camp that allows them to explore independent living and create a foundation for the workplace. There’s also pre-employment training, career assessments, and field trips to companies. And, of course, there’s making friends.
“When you see them figuring things out for themselves, making a friend, getting together when they leave SOAR, contacting us that they’re ready for us to help them look for a job, it’s very rewarding for me,” Rubin says.
According to Autism Speaks, autism spectrum disorder is characterized by a range of traits, such as “challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication.” Scott, the eldest of Rubin’s three sons, was diagnosed with autism at 2. The Rubins were told there wasn’t much that could be done for him, but they didn’t accept that outlook. Scott was nonverbal until the age of 14, so Rubin took an 18-week sign language course and taught it to him and his teachers.
She also noticed that his self-injuring behavior and tantrums waned when she took him on her morning runs. The family got creative in pushing Scott out of his comfort zone to try new things and learn skills he needed for the real world.
“I often tell people I had such anxiety about him leaving school. It’s been such a part of his life since he was 3 years to 21 years old,” Rubin says. “I actually found it more stressful than when he was diagnosed [with autism].”
Rubin’s friends encouraged her to start her own program, and in 2011 Autism After 21 was born. Four years later, they started the SOAR program.
“Scott has had an amazing life, and he’s getting ready to live in an independent living situation, but there is no agency and there is no person that’s going to do this for your child. It’s on the parents,” Rubin says. (autismafter21.org)
COUNSELING PARENTS: I always tell them, try everything that’s available. The younger you start on the therapy the better, and then I kind of couch a little bit by saying part of the reason that Scott has been able to become Scott is I started doing a lot of things he doesn’t want to do, that made him unhappy, pushing him outside of his comfort zone. But the breakthroughs can be incredible if you can do it. … I always tell the moms, look, it’s OK to be upset about this, this is a huge thing. Nowadays everybody wants to feel like everything is good. … You just want to act like everything’s fine. It’s not fine, and it’s OK to be upset about this.
MEETING ABILITIES: We have separate sessions in SOAR where we kind of try to peer-match our students. One session is devoted to students who are in college, community college, or who are ready for inclusive employment, and another session is for maybe the middle-of-the-road guy, [who] maybe wants to go to a vocational school, get certificate training. Then we do a group for the Scotts of the world that have intellectual disabilities. They would not be able to successfully attend a post-secondary education, but they can learn how to work and learn to be independent. The curriculum doesn’t change much; we just have to present it on the level of the students in front of us.
SEEING GROWTH: I always say I get way more out of the program than the students do. Just watching them have that lightbulb moment that they’re away from home [and] capable of making decisions without their parents or teachers doing it for them … to realize they can have a life; they’re just going to have to put some work into it.
This story is from the May/June 2026 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
