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By Cynthia Marone
Every time a Peace Valley Café apprentice serves up a steaming cup of La Colombe coffee, Donnamarie Davis sees it as a dream come true—literally. “I saw the building in my dream. When I saw the building in my dream, the inside of it, I saw it finished,” Donnamarie, the program manager of the café’s nonprofit Mentor/Work-Based Apprenticeship Program for disabled teens and adults, said. “The part I could see in the dream looks just like it did in the dream, which to me is a miracle because to see how that building transformed, it really was a miracle.”
Miracles and transformations—as well as java, tea, grab-and-go snacks and more—are par for the course at Peace Valley Café, which is located in the former Bucks County crime lab in Levittown. Donnamarie’s dream was back in 2015 and, after more than a decade filled to the brim with determination, dedication and delays, the coffeehouse she envisioned is finally ready for its April 10 grand opening—just in time to highlight Autism Acceptance Month—in the revamped and revitalized space that the county has leased to the café for $1 a year until 2045.
The real dream, though, was about much more than a new coffee shop. “Over the years of representing so many special needs children, youths, young adults and seeing how they were always underestimated, always told you can't do this, you can't do that, they were always labeled, labeled, labeled. When I represented them, I saw the opposite. I saw the total opposite,” the former federal litigator who recently retired from her own private legal practice that specialized in employment law, education law for exceptional children and civil rights said. “That's the key: Having somebody believe in you, believe you can do it, and having faith in you.”
Believing is what patrons will be seeing at Peace Valley Café, where ages 17 to 27 are taught real-world skills in a supportive environment at a full-blown café complete with customers, workstations, organic add-ins, alternative milk choices and drink recipes. The complexities of a modern-day menu could make any newbie barista mix up their matcha and mocha, but this academic year’s crop of 20 Neshaminy High School and Bucks County Intermediate Unit apprentices have had tons of training, including talks on hygiene, coping techniques and job interview skills. In other words, the apprentices are more than ready to take your order. “At the cafe, it’s every kind of challenge. That might mean they're autistic. It might mean they have an intellectual challenge. We also might have somebody that has a heart transplant, but also has some intellectual challenges. It runs the spectrum of challenges,”
Donnamarie, who is vice president and co-founder of the nonprofit Peace Valley Holistic Center in Chalfont, said. “We're mimicking what's going to happen when we completely open to the public so this way there's no anxiety and no regression. Even when we open to the public, the job coaches are still going to be there.”
The café and its apprenticeship concept came about when Donnamarie and her mother, holistic center president and founder Dr. Christina Davis, saw a chasm growing between disabled people leaving school and finding their greater purpose. The holistic center, which opened in 2010, works to provide comfort to and improve the quality of life for those living with disabling conditions and their families with a focus on those with autism. The café is a holistic center program that has built a bridge where apprentices are trained and prepared for transitions into their communities, taking the skills they learned with them to jobs in various fields.
At the cafe, apprentices are under the guidance of job coaches, teachers, peer-to-peer support and Donnamarie, who does everything from scheduling guest speakers and writing grant proposals to tracking inventory and taking out the days’ trash. Crossing the finish line to a grand opening after more than a decade of setbacks—from a building that practically had to be gutted that also needed a new roof to an unprecedented pandemic—is one more thing Donnamarie was determined to make happen, but if someone had read her tea leaves years ago, they would not have seen any of this in her future.
Donnamarie’s family moved from Northeast Philadelphia to Warminster when she was 8. Even then, her artistic talents were shining through as was her love of animals, which she routinely celebrated in her artwork. Today, she and husband Carmen Borgia share that love with Picasso, their 7-year-old large standard parti poodle, and Carmichael, their 15-year-old Maine coon cat.
As a child, her art was winning awards, and as a student, she was tapped to create a mural at Klinger Junior High School, now known as Klinger Middle School, in Southampton. Though she graduated in 1996 from the now-shuttered University of the Arts in Philadelphia with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration, she had had a life-changing experience in London while studying theater at Ealing Art College. Donnamarie recalls hearing her landlady being savagely beaten by her boyfriend. Her quick thinking saved the women’s life, but what Donnamarie had witnessed stirred ideas of a career change before her first UArts semester had even begun. “It was still rolling around in my head. Because of that, it actually made me realize I almost felt selfish continuing on as an artist, and then had this insatiable need to help abused women and children,” Donnamarie, who spent a year as the on-camera domestic violence expert for the daytime talk show “The Montel Williams Show,” said. “That need to want to help, that passion to help abused women and children, overrode continuing on as an artist.”
She earned her Juris Doctor in 2000 at Widener University School of Law, now known as Widener University Delaware Law School, in Wilmington. In her senior year, Donnamarie represented people through the Domestic Abuse Project of Delaware County in Media’s courtrooms. She closed her private practice in 2025 after 21 years, but keeps a helping hand outstretched through pro bono work that steers those in legal need to the right attorneys.
The café, holistic center and her pro bono consultations keep her busy. To decompress, she takes to the great outdoors, from walks in the park to occasional visits to the beach. What really sustains her is taking on an entirely different character.
As an actress, Donnamarie has been in commercials and films such as “Glass,” “Rocky V” and “Eddie and the Cruisers” and on TV in “Servant” and “Task.” The latter, a Delaware County-set drama starring Mark Ruffalo, cast Donnamarie as an attorney for its final episode that brought her back to an all-too-familiar setting. “That scene was filmed in the very courtroom I first started in. Not until the day of filming, when they drove us to set, did I know that's where we were going. When I went in and realized what courtroom we were filming in, it was surreal to me,” the William Tennent High School in Warminster graduate who was inducted into its 2025 Artistic Hall of Fame said. “When I'm lucky enough to be cast in something, that actually becomes what fills up my cup. I realize I have to keep my creative spirit alive so I have something to give back. I come back from that experience being recharged and inspired.”
Surely that metaphorical “cup” is also filled with coffee and the energy Donnamarie brings back from set will keep the cafe forever moving forward. She is the first to admit the café is not and never has been a one-woman show. Many people, businesses, organizations, companies and labor unions gave their time, talents, equipment, funds and grants to make it happen, including Buz Harris as the site’s volunteer general contractor. It’s the start of something big, and Donnamarie already knows where she’d like things to go.
“Ultimately, I would like to see the apprentices run Peace Valley Cafe. Then maybe have another one open up somewhere else in the county and continue this for other students that will become apprentices and then become employed,” Donnamarie Davis said. “That cafe's become my happy place. I can't tell you how happy and proud I am of all of them.”
For more information about Peace Valley Cafe, 2657 Trenton Road, visit facebook.com/p/Peace-Valley-Cafe. To become a sponsor, grantor or donor, including to the April 10 grand opening, call 215-317-2275. Prior to the grand opening, café visits are by appointment only and may be made by emailing dmdavis@lawyer.com.
Cynthia Marone is a freelance writer who lives in Bucks County.