Hope:

for over 100 years hutton settlement has been providing young people with a home and the opportunity to grow

WRITTEN BY JEFF FIJOLEK
PHOTOS BY MADDISON FOLEY

The COVID shutdowns of 2020 were an entrepreneurial catalyst for many folks around the country. Some used their time stuck at home to launch new businesses as their primary source of income and others used that time to turn their creative outlets into side hustles.

In 2020, Parker Ritzmann was 17 and living at Hutton Settlement, an alternative home for children situated north of the Spokane River where Millwood becomes Orchard Prairie. With a sprawling 300 acres, Hutton Settlement Children’s Home offered Ritzmann and his peers ample room to roam, but they enjoyed limited amenities and connection to the “outside world” during the four months they spent on campus. Parker has always had a knack for sales and entrepreneurship, so when he repeatedly heard the folks around him saying they missed getting their daily coffee fix, he asked a Hutton alumnus who was working on staff at the time for a $300 loan.

A short time later, armed with an espresso machine purchased from Amazon and $50-worth of coffee and syrups, Ritzmann opened an on-campus cafe he called “Oasis Espresso” to serve his peers and Hutton staff members. Within a week, he repaid his loan.

In the months that followed, Parker started to learn more about the coffee industry. A Hutton advisor and mentor introduced him to the idea of roasting beans and selling coffee by the bag instead of by the cup. This piqued Ritzmann’s interest even more, especially after learning the potential profit margins. With the support of Hutton staff members, Parker and co-founder Roxy Frederickson wrote up a business plan for what would become HOPE Neighborhood Roasters.

HOPE stands for “Hutton Opportunities for Professional Exploration”, and over the past three and a half years, Ritzmann and his peers have taken advantage of training from icons of the specialty coffee industry all while interacting with the Spokane community and building out an educational program to help future children who call Hutton Settlement home.

“The O in HOPE is the most crucial aspect,” says Ritzmann, now a student at the University of Washington. “Opportunities are what make life interesting, make life fun, make life worth living. I can’t speak on HOPE Neighborhood Roasters without the idea of the Hutton Settlement and how they have given me countless opportunities.”

Since it was founded over 100 years ago, an estimated 1,600 kids have journeyed up Hutton Settlement’s tree-lined driveway where they have been given a home and an opportunity to experience a better childhood than that of its founder.

Born in Iowa in 1860, Levi Hutton was orphaned early in his life. Forced to leave school by the time he was ten in order to earn his keep on his uncle’s farm, Hutton never received more than a third-grade education and never felt like he was truly part of a family. Upon turning 18, Hutton embarked on a journey westward in search of opportunity, eventually landing as an engineer for the Northern Pacific Railroad in the area of Wardner Junction (now Kellogg), Idaho.

There, he met May Arkwright, a local boarding house owner known for her culinary skills and advocacy for women's suffrage. The pair fell in love, married and invested their life savings of $880 for a small share of the nearby Hercules silver mine. For over a decade, May and Levi worked the mine themselves in addition to their regular jobs, pouring sweat equity into what most locals considered a lost cause and nothing more than a “hole in the ground.” Eventually, in June of 1901, the mine proved successful, turning the Huttons into millionaires overnight.

With this newfound wealth, the couple once again headed west for greater opportunities, this time to Spokane where Levi started amassing a real estate portfolio and May continued her community activism. Among the first commercial properties developed by Levi was the Hutton Building downtown at Sprague and S Washington which would also serve as their primary residence for a number of years. During this time, Levi and May were active with various local organizations and shared their fortune with others. With no children of their own, the Huttons were supporters of local unwed mothers and even served as de facto foster parents at times. They built a home on the South Hill adjacent to what is now Lincoln Park–which was their backyard before the land was donated to the City of Spokane–sadly May lived there for only a short time before dying of kidney disease in 1915.

In the years that followed, Levi set out on a period of rediscovery, continuing to support the philanthropic causes May was passionate about and spending more time in the yet-to-be-developed natural surroundings of Spokane.

While on a hike in the rolling hills on the north bank of the Spokane River, Hutton admired the landscape and found inspiration in My Heart Leaps Up, an 1807 poem by William Wordsworth. Envisioning a home for children who, like him, had experienced adversity, Levi started acquiring the 319 acres of land approximately 8 miles east-northeast of downtown Spokane that would become Hutton Settlement.

Noted local architect Harold Whitehouse was tasked with the design and construction of Hutton Settlement’s campus buildings; Levi didn’t give him a budget; instead he asked for something that would last for 250 years.

Hutton Settlement opened in 1919, offering hope, opportunity, a sense of belonging and a home to children facing challenging circumstances. The campus featured a working farm with cattle and pigs as a way to be self-sufficient and accommodate living on the outskirts of town. The original barn still sits at the top of a hill overlooking the campus and providing sweeping views of the nearby development that came to surround Hutton Settlement as Spokane grew to this part of town. Upon his death in 1928, Levi left the land to a private trust, ensuring that all 319 acres would remain untouched and used as he intended. Hutton Settlement is still primarily funded through an endowment, including a portfolio of commercial real-estate holdings left by Levi, eliminating dependence on government funding.

Hutton employs a “Circle of Security” care model these days, straying from a behavioral model that has long been the standard in other residential care settings. “Our difference is we focus on connection over compliance,” says Director of Education David Milliken.

At 52, the certified National Geographic Educator and graduate from Gonzaga’s Master’s of Organizational Leadership program has spent over half his life living and working at Hutton, serving as the campus director for many years before transitioning to his current position in 2021. Milliken notes that kids often arrive at Hutton with a mistrust of the world or a belief that they themselves have done something wrong. 

“They’re literally on our doorstep, oftentimes not with family, about to be placed into a community where they know no one. Now that’s a tragedy whether you’re five or 50.”

Hutton Settlement and its four cottages can house up to 40 kids ranging from six to 18, each with a set of “house parents” to supervise their residents and foster a familial setting. 

“These deeply caring individuals are trained to tap into those wounded areas and navigate—for years and years and years—life with these kids so that they begin to see that caregivers aren’t threatening. Caregivers can be trusted,” adds Milliken.

Part of Milliken’s desire to transition into his current role came about after seeing how systemic failures and state policies fueled a culture of fear in the child welfare industry that assumed kids were a problem who needed to be fixed and fueled a disconnect between them and their caregivers. Milliken remembers a Hutton resident breaking down in tears at his high school graduation, who despite apparent successes in the classroom, playing sports and participating in student government, still felt something was missing inside.

“He said ‘I’m actually leaving here with a big black hole in my heart.’ And that was a gut punch for me,” recounts Milliken. “We were blinded to some of these deeper needs and just masking them with external things. So there was a huge shift, and we decided we need to be even more intentional and tap into things at the heart-level. We realized that what we need to do is change the mindset and not focus on the behavior change.”

This perspective has driven Milliken’s desire to present Hutton Settlement kids with programs and opportunities to explore life as a whole in the hopes that they find out what their passions are–and what they aren’t. Milliken was vital to the development of the HOPE Neighborhood Roasters program, as he was the one who initially mentored Ritzmann and introduced him to the possibility of roasting coffee.

“When I first met David, I was selling paraphernalia at school, and he saw this entrepreneurial spark in me. I remember vividly the time I got caught selling weed at school; I was 16 years old, trying to save up to buy a car, and so I did what I knew best and that was to sell. David took me into his office and told me, ‘You can either stay and stop selling these drugs and what you’ll come to see is an endless world of opportunities. Or you can continue to sell drugs, and Hutton, being a place of developing children, will have to find you another residence,’” recalls Parker. “This sense of choice really took me off guard. The man that runs the show is telling me I can continue to sell drugs, but I’ll lose my home–maybe I should stop selling drugs, I thought. After bouncing around throughout the country in multiple homes, I saw how good Hutton was, and I saw just a glimpse of where I could go with this community.

After that moment my outlook on Hutton really changed. I saw it as a place of community and togetherness. I saw it as a place for opportunity.”

Milliken tries to drive home to all of the kids who come through Hutton Settlement that even when they leave, they are part of the largest family in Spokane. More than that, he hopes that they are transformed.

“My role as I direct educational programs is to really expose them to a world that is different. A world of awe and wonder and interconnectivity and community. And to help them understand that at their deepest core is goodness,” he says.

During the pandemic, Milliken and Hutton Settlement also used some of their time and resources to change and build up areas of the campus in order to improve some of their self-sustainability, producing more on-site as a way to foster a greater sense of community and advance these educational opportunities. Hutton Settlement has long been home to a working Christmas tree farm and recently completed a permaculture design program to better help them plan out campus improvements. With the densely wooded area that surrounds the campus, it continues to host “Forest School” each Friday giving residents the opportunity to forage, craft and learn, all while fostering appreciation and connection to their natural surroundings. Building on Levi Hutton’s belief that the farm should be a central component of this place, David is quick to point out that child labor laws were very different a century ago and that all the kids who participate on the farm team these days do so voluntarily. Still, the fact that they’re learning while also getting a bit of an extra allowance doesn’t hurt, either.

“One of my heroes is Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he said, ‘What is a farm but a mute gospel?’ And he wasn’t using gospel in the sort of strict religious sense, but the idea that a garden is about regeneration, it’s about transformation,” David notes. “That’s what we’re doing when we’re getting kids out there, learning about life and new ways of doing things and regeneration and restoration. I mean, to me, that’s like everything.”

There are approximately 50 kids and staff living at Hutton Settlement these days, and Milliken says he has about a dozen participants on the farm team growing food for their own little CSA (Campus Supported Agriculture) program. Produce grown at Hutton goes back to the cottages where house parents prepare meals for their residents.

“In the summertime, most of the stuff being prepared is from our garden, and we have four or five kids doing our culinary program. We have everything from corn to beans, squash and tomatoes. We find out what the kids like to eat and what the house parents like to cook, so we have that dialed in pretty well,” says Milliken. “We are also very mindful of getting the most nutrition to our kids, so we grow various highly nutraceutical plants.”

The addition of a “food forest” in recent years is now teeming with everything from goji and Aronia berries, which are used in smoothies, to hazelnuts and herbs, which get blended up into pesto over the summer. A biointensive garden behind the cottages is home to vegetables, including gigantic pumpkins, squash and watermelons. There are currently peppers growing in the hoop house and greenhouse that David says will end up in a special Hutton Settlement hot sauce. The barn is home to four babydoll sheep who help to silvopasture around the property and 60 chickens who lay enough eggs to satisfy a campus of breakfast eaters with enough leftovers to share with some local neighbors and alums. Rick Hastings of Liberty Ciderworks has even taken apples from the small on-site orchard and created a special estate blend cider for Hutton in the past, though, at 7.3% alcohol, it’s not a campus product that the kids get to enjoy.

“Every Thursday, we do a thing called Blue Crew. We break staff and kids into teams and mix them up so they get to know each other outside of their cottages, and there are little challenges. And then we gather together as an entire community, and we eat together,” David says. “One challenge was to go out, forage around in our gardens for ingredients to make their own pizza sauce. Then we fired up the woodfired pizza oven, and everyone got to have dinner. Those are probably some of the greatest times out here.”

On the horizon, Milliken expects to grow Hutton Settlement’s beekeeping operation, start a mycology program in an underused yurt, and expand their biointensive program to include a flower farm, among others.

As these programs at Hutton continue to grow, Milliken cites National Geographic’s geoliteracy curriculum and its emphasis on developing the “explorer mindset.” Hutton residents attend schools in the West Valley School District, but knowing that they are secure and cared for opens the door to more learning opportunities, both on and off campus, encouraging these kids to explore the world in unique and exciting ways as a way to foster growth in themselves.

“They kick off the curriculum with different attitudes: the attitude of curiosity, the attitude of empathy, and the attitude of empowerment. And they all lead into one another. You're curious about the world, about something different, something about yourself. Then you learn about someone else, you get their perspective, and then you work together and create something beautiful. And that's what the farm is centered on. It's also what HOPE Roasters is centered on,” says Milliken. “So what we’re offering here at Hutton are opportunities to not only get involved and engaged in nature-based things or community-based things, but starting to find out what makes your heart sing. And then how can we, through scholarships and things like that, give you the resources to make that happen? What is your dream, and let’s get there.”

After introducing Parker to the possibility of roasting coffee, Milliken took him and Roxy up to Ponderay, Idaho, for a field trip to visit the headquarters of Diedrich Roasters.

“We went in, and my mind was blown once more,” recalls Ritzmann. “Seeing roasters that cost a quarter of a million dollars showed me that, damn, coffee is massive. I learned that coffee is the second largest traded commodity in the world behind crude oil—and I told myself I wanted a piece of this pie.”

Armed with their business for HOPE Neighborhood Roasters, David, Parker and Roxy turned to Chud Wendell, Executive Director of Hutton Settlement, and Jessica Laughery, Director of Community Engagement & Stewardship, who helped secure a grant in order to purchase a roasting machine and cover capital improvements to repurpose the old plum-drying for campus fruit trees into a roasting room. 

“Parker had this huge vision, and I was just all on board. I wanted to do it for the education, not necessarily the money. And it did give me the opportunity to not only learn something, but find out what I want to do for the rest of my life, to some degree,” says Frederickson, who is already looking at study abroad programs on coffee farms and has considered getting a masters in coffee offered by the University of Florence.

The process of roasting coffee isn’t one that is easy to just pick up. There is a lot of trial and error required to get a quality product with each roast, even on advanced machines that measure and track a number of variables. But early in their roasting operation, the HOPE team received a welcome leg up when Steve Diedrich, founder and former owner of Diedrich Roasters, decided to follow his curiosity and take a turn into Hutton Settlement to quell his curiosity about the property following a nearby meeting in Millwood. After learning a bit about Hutton Settlement and the kids’ mission, Diedrich offered to volunteer his time and teach the HOPE roasting team how to break in their machine while also helping them navigate the world of coffee from importing to packaging and preparation.

“He has in essence adopted these kids,” says Milliken.

Diedrich’s lifetime of experience and influence in the coffee industry has left a lasting mark on HOPE Neighborhood Roasters and its founding partners.

“If you want to learn about coffee, you go to the Specialty Coffee Association,” says Ritzmann. “If you want to be one with coffee, Steve Diedrich will find you and guide you.”

Diedrich even met the HOPE team in Boston for the Special Coffee Association’s annual expo, introducing them to industry experts and dignitaries from around the world. At that same meeting, the gang from Hutton introduced Steve to Jorge, a coffee farmer from El Salvador with whom HOPE Neighborhood Roasters maintains a direct relationship. 

“The founder of Diedrich Roasters and an El Salvadoran farmer. We’re bringing these people together, which is insane,” Frederickson says. 

The HOPE team invited Jorge and his sister, Claudia, to Hutton last summer to learn how to roast on their Deidrich machine and were planning a trip to El Salvador to visit this past summer before a family emergency diverted their travel to Costa Rica. There, they visited five different farms, including a large-scale operation belonging to Starbucks and other small, independent producers.

“I’m having these connections with the farmers, and I’m experiencing what it’s like to pick the coffee. To promote the coffee and to roast the coffee in a really honoring way that values what those farmers are doing so that I can make sure that when it goes to a cafe it is being treated with respect and it’s the highest quality we can get,” adds Roxy.

“Listening to their story and understanding the difficulties of being a farmer really inspired us to do this direct farm relationship. It wasn’t really in our budget to do so, but we made it work. There’s just this connection we have with them now, and it’s almost like just within this small little business we have, we’re supporting them. As our business gets bigger, we can buy more than four bags a year, which would really benefit them.”

In terms of growing the business, HOPE coffee has had a presence at the Millwood Farmers Market and the Spokane Valley Farmers Market for the past few summers, offering the kids an opportunity to sell their product, interact with members of the community at large and share a bit of the story behind their experiences, all while building up a customer base for direct, subscription sales.

Roxy says that they roasted about 42 pounds per week during the summer to fill subscription orders, but it’s winter with Hutton Settlement’s Holiday Market and Christmas tree operation that really helps the business grow. In their first year, HOPE Neighborhood Roasters sold 300 bags over a two week period. In 2022, that number doubled to meet demand from the community.

Still, Parker, who was born in Ethiopia and bounced around different homes and boarding schools before settling in at the children’s home, and Roxy, an 11-year resident of Hutton along with a few of her siblings, want customers to buy their product because it’s good, not because it’s “made by orphans.”

“We’re trying to veer away from Hutton being the first thing people think about. When they find out it’s from a children’s home, yeah, maybe that might be a motive for them to subscribe. We would rather they love the taste of our specialty coffee,” Roxy notes. “They’re supporting us and Hutton, but they’re also supporting farmers in El Salvador and youth entrepreneurship.”

One-on-one mentorship like this is an important part of the “Professional Exploration” that is built into the HOPE model, but Ritzmann knows that he–and the industry experts–can’t be on hand all the time. When Roxy left to start college this fall, it left the HOPE roasting team with only David still on campus; so Parker put together a 75-hour “academy” program to train a new generation of Hutton kids not just how to run the business, but how to run a business.

Blending field trips with on-site experience, the HOPE Academy program seeks to encourage creative and critical thinking inside this business setting. And the curriculum seems to be working. At this point in the business, Milliken says that he is there to consult and mentor. The kids have all the tools and information necessary to fix any issues that may arise, and he wants to encourage and empower them to figure out ways they can improve the operation going forward.

“We really wanted to give these kids an in-depth learning experience,” says Frederickson. When Serenity and Isaac came along, really the only things that they needed to know by that time were how do we roast? How do we cup? How do we package? They didn’t really get that hands-on experience of creating a business plan and revising the business. I think what really inspired Parker and I to continue doing this is because we actually have some sort of ownership in what we’re doing. We felt like we created something, and I want each generation to feel like they’re adding something on to HOPE and not just maintaining it. We’re evolving as a business.”

Serenity, 17, is currently the manager of the HOPE team now that Parker and Roxy have moved away, but her first major contribution to evolving the business came out of her core interests–architecture and interior design.

“My first impact was our Community Cafe. I noticed that we were considered like a neighborhood roastery; we weren’t really interacting with the cottages beyond just giving them coffee. I knew we were missing something, so I had them come up here and started serving them coffee. Then I told David we should make a little cafe thing,” she says.

As they were trying to get this project off the ground, the kids reached out to Bobby Enslow of Indaba Coffee, inviting him to Hutton to provide some insight on cafe design. Enslow also provided training on steaming milk, making drinks, and setting up an online store for HOPE Neighborhood Roasters.

Now, the roasting room in the old plum-dryer is home to a cafe space that Serenity helped design, with room for production and communal gathering. Each Saturday morning, HOPE Neighborhood Roasters hosts a Community Cafe for staff and residents, often inviting special guests to come and enjoy. Scarlett, another member of the HOPE team with a passion for baking makes pastries using items sourced from the campus while Isaac and Serenity ser up drinks for all of their peers and neighbors.

“Coffee is more than just coffee. It’s also philosophy. I mean, people meet in a coffee shop and that’s how revolutions start. It’s so much more than just a beverage,” Roxy says.

With the support of Hutton Settlement and HOPE, Parker and Roxy have an educational stipend in order to help further their educational pursuits in coffee and give them the opportunity to supplement the Academy curriculum. And they are both eager to see how the new generation of Hutton kids taking over the HOPE operations can continue to build the business, locally and outside of our region. Already, there are talks of expanding into wholesale and events, but all of that will likely depend on the staff’s ability to juggle their schoolwork and social lives.

Recently, David took a trip to Ireland with a number of Hutton Settlement alums and staff members. It was a family vacation for a few members of what he calls the biggest family in Spokane. 

Parker was there, taking a break to join the group following a summer studying in Europe. Milliken even surprised everyone with rings made to commemorate this trip and any others in the future if it becomes a trend. They are inlaid with wood from one of Hutton Settlement’s maple trees and ore that was sourced from Levi Hutton’s rock collection, a relic from the Hercules Mine.

“Every year we’ll sit down and let’s talk about where in the world we are going to go. And what are we going to learn together? And what are we going to do to grow?”

David says that no one ages out of Hutton and no one is forgotten. Enduring relationships matter. Seeking out new opportunities matters. That outlook has no doubt rubbed off onto Ritzmann.

“HOPE Neighborhood Roasters wouldn’t be here without the gracious people who have empowered us with opportunities. Our goal is to return the favor by providing young people here with opportunities,” Reflects Ritzmann. “HOPE Neighborhood Roasters inspires, empowers, educates, and provides opportunities not for just the Hutton Settlement Children but anyone in this world who wants to learn and make a global impact. That’s what we do.

“We impact lives, we challenge societal pressures, and we break barriers as young people, the future leaders of tomorrow. When you buy HOPE coffee, you are not just helping out orphans; you are buying the best specialty coffee in Spokane. You are empowering farmers that span across continents. You are a part of a community that serves. And most importantly, you are investing in the lives of the future leaders of the world.”

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