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When Vice President JD Vance stopped in at his hometown bakery last Friday, the last thing Cristaliz Portalatin expected was for him to invite her to his upcoming rally.
But before she knew it, Portalatin and two of her fellow Central Pastry Shop employees were piling into a car in Vance’s motorcade to watch him speak at the nearby steel mill in Middletown, Ohio.
“We knew he was going to come into Middletown, so we assumed he was going to stop by the shop,” Portalatin, 28, told Fox News Digital in an interview Wednesday. “That morning, I was praying, and I was like, ‘You know, it’d be nice for him to stop by, we can take a picture and talk to him.'”
Vance did indeed visit, first greeting the shop’s owner, Vera Slamka, who made a joke about him “losing too much weight” since the last time they saw each other. The vice president laughed before ordering an “ugly,” the shop’s signature misshapen-glazed donut. He called them “the best donuts in the world.”
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After Vance took pictures with Slamka and the rest of the staff, Portalatin recalled making an offhand comment about wanting to see the vice president’s speech.
“It was a comment that I made when he was talking to Vera. I just said, ‘I would like to see the speech.’ And he just said, ‘Do you want to come?’ That came from him,” Portalatin said.
Portalatin, along with her coworkers Ursula Bush and Jennifer Coby, accepted the offer and got to ride in a car with one of Vance’s staffers.
“We were just like laughing and were taking videos,” Portalatin said. “It was very fun. We were just really enjoying. And I think the people that were there with us were also enjoying us and our reaction.”
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After an eight-minute ride, the starstruck trio were led into the Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill and were seated immediately left of the stage Vance spoke from.
His speech focused on the new $500 million federal grant for the facility, which Vance’s grandfather worked at as a welder decades earlier. Cleveland-Cliffs will invest another $500 million.
The public-private investment is aimed at strengthening the domestic steel supply chain and is estimated to create 2,300 jobs, according to the Department of Energy.
Bush, 53, told Fox News Digital that it was “amazing” to watch Vance announce this revitalization of the steel plant because she too has had many family members who worked there, including her father, great-grandfather, great-grandmother and great-uncle.
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Bush said Vance came across as “genuine” and “personable.”
“I got that when I was talking to him. He didn’t have to ask us to come with him. He didn’t have to treat us as well as he treated us,” she said.
Another thing about Vance that “spoke volumes” about his character was his attentiveness to his new baby, Alec Neel Vance, who was born on July 19.
“He told us a little story about how the baby slept for the first time and only woke up once that night,” Bush said. “I have three kids that I took care of all by myself, and for him to know that the kid only woke up once, that to me meant a lot. That made him a real person to me.”
The two women came away grateful for the experience, with both of them admitting they are still buzzing almost a week later.
“It truly was an honor to do something that not a lot of people get to do. I really think God allowed that to happen to us. So I’m still excited. I’ll probably be excited for the next lifetime,” Portalatin said.
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