BALTIMORE -- One of Rebecca Rienzi’s favorite stories to tell about Pathfinders for Autism – the Baltimore County nonprofit where she has been executive director since 2010 – happened at the National Aquarium in the Inner Harbor.

Every year, the organization rents out the aquarium to give people with autism and their families the chance to experience the facility without the sensory overload its noisy crowds usually would create. During one event, a child recently diagnosed with the developmental disability had a minor meltdown and started rolling on the floor. His mother was embarrassed, Rienzi recalled, and apologized profusely to a Pathfinders employee who was standing nearby.

“Take a breath and turn around,” the employee told the mother, Rienzi said. “She turned around and looked at him, and everybody’s walking past and they’re stepping over him. Nobody’s blaming, nobody’s looking”

“It’s like, ‘Oh, I found my people,’” Rienzi continued. “It’s a judgment-free zone, so that families can explore and learn new things.”

Pathfinders for Autism has been providing that judgment-free zone for more than two decades. It was founded by Maryland parents of children with autism – including Baltimore Orioles Hall of Famer William “B.J.” Surhoff and his wife Polly Winde Surhoff – who were frustrated about the lack of trustworthy information available about the disability.

The internet in the early 2000s didn’t look anything like what it does today, Rienzi said. Instead, parents mostly shared information by word of mouth. Since Pathfinder’s beginnings, the organization has provided a resource center where parents can learn to navigate their children’s diagnosis. What started out as a “person on the phone” has grown to a website with a database of more than 3,000 organizations and service providers, Rienzi said.

The database includes adult psychologists who specialize in autism and adult day care programs, but it also features “basic life things,” Rienzi said, like barbers who are experienced in cutting the hair of people with autism and where to shop for shoes or go to the dentist.

Today, Rienzi estimates that Pathfinders touches the lives of thousands of people every year — whether through adult social groups for people with autism, recreational activities, the resource center or training sessions for police officers, librarians, educators and others who interact with people who have the disability.

Still, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. every weekday, the organization has a parent manning the phones, ready to give advice. Trish Kane, Pathfinders’ deputy director, is sometimes that parent. She often hears from parents who ask for advice about how to help their child be more independent, and from people who suspect they might have autism, who want tips on how to get a diagnosis.

Even though her son who has autism is 30 years old, Kane said she learns something new about the disability all the time through her job at Pathfinders.

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