Scott Crane, 23, inspired chef Rodelio Aglibot’s charity
BY NATALIE HAYES Sun-Times Media June 15, 2011 7:42PM
Scott Crane (left) prepares sushi with Chef Rodelio Aglibot, the former head chef at Chicago’s Sunda restaurant. | Photo courtesy Teena Crane
Updated: August 3, 2011 9:48PM
Scott Crane, a young Northbrook man who inspired chef Rodelio Aglibot to leave his high-profile New York restaurant gig and start a charity, has died. Mr. Crane, 23, was a foodie who, despite severe physical limitations as a result of a rare form of muscular dystrophy, had volunteered to help others with disabilities and had been working on a cookbook. He died Saturday — three days before an event to launch Aglibot’s charity, In Chef’s Hands: Food Therapy for the Soul. The kickoff, held in Old Town, went on Tuesday in Mr. Crane’s memory. The idea behind the charity is to get chefs to give day-in-the-kitchen experiences to people with special needs and their families, helping them learn to cook. Last fall, Mr. Crane’s cousin Jeremy Dubin introduced him to a friend, Aglibot, then head chef at the Chicago restaurant Sunda . Aglibot invited Mr. Crane to spend a Saturday afternoon with him in Sunda’s kitchen and showed him how to make sushi and other dishes. “For those few hours when we were cooking together, his pain would go away,” Aglibot said earlier this year. Inspired by Mr. Crane, Aglibot decided to start the charity. So far, he has recruited more than a dozen Chicago chefs to volunteer with In Chef’s Hands. “When Scott is around food, it’s therapy for him — why not share that with other people with special needs?” Aglibot said of the decision to start the charity. Mr. Crane was 4 years old when he was diagnosed with a form of muscular dystrophy called centronuclear myopathy. The disease slowly weakened his muscles, causing him to need a wheelchair since he was a pre-teen. After graduating from Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook and later enrolling in community college, he started volunteering as a mentor at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. He also worked part-time at the Corner Bakery Cafe in Northbrook. Mr. Crane was going at life full-force until the fall of 2009, when he ended up in the hospital with a life-threatening lung condition that left him confined to a hospital bed for 2½ months. In the hospital, his conditioned worsened. He dropped to a dangerously low 70 pounds. Doctors suggested he be transferred to hospice care. One day at Midwest Hospice Care Center, a social worker asked if there was anything he’d like. “Cooking,” he said. “He’s always been a foodie — he just loves cooking and food,” said Teena Crane, his mother. The hospice brought in a culinary instructor from Kendall College to show him the basics of cooking. Mr. Crane started regaining some of his weight — he got up to 130 pounds and grew strong enough to leave hospice care and return home with his family. Mr. Crane started cooking with a volunteer who came to his home every week and began researching recipes and cooking techniques. They were working together on the Midwest Hospice Care Center Cookbook, a compilation of hundreds of recipes to be sold to support research into muscular dystrophy.
A cousin, Cory Gutwillig, recalled how Mr. Crane “would sit on his computer every day and talk to people from around the world. Despite his disease, he wanted others to smile and be happy — he never complained, and he always put on a happy face and worked to help others.” Mr. Crane is survived by his parents, Teena and Michael Crane; a sister, Lindsay Crane, and grandparents Charlotte and Norman Boyer. Services have been held.
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