FLORISSANT, Mo. — At La Patisserie bakery in Florissant, Missouri, more is more. The mini Bundt cakes are glazed in strawberry champagne. Butterfly tea is sipped from Tiffany-blue cups. On the wall next to the display case of Asian-French pastries, a glowing pink sign reads: “That’s a terrible idea. What time?â€
Owner Kitt Villasis-Corbin has always been up for an adventure. She speaks three languages and has lost count of the number of countries she’s been to — for corporate jobs, modeling work, visits to far-flung relatives and friends. She’s been married twice, raised three children and is on her second round of motherhood with her 8-year-old son.
“I’ve lived a very colorful life,†Villasis-Corbin said.
Through it all, baking — her “first loveâ€Â — has been a constant companion.
In her earliest memories, she’s in her childhood kitchen in the Philippines, at her mother’s elbow. They are making plateloads of treats, enough for her eight siblings and dozens of cousins. Her grandmother is brushing the Christmas fruitcake with bourbon.
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Later, Villasis-Corbin is the one doing the teaching, showing her kids how to whip up banana bread and flan.
To her, baking is art, self-expression, connection. She never thought it would be her profession.
“If you grow up in an Asian home, ‘chef’ is not on that list,†she said.
But more than 8,000 miles away from where she was raised — in a city she didn’t know existed as a kid — she became one, turning her on North Lindbergh Boulevard into an -worthy escape.
“Every time you come in here, it’s like an event,†said MaryJo Neunuebel of Florissant, a regular since the bakery opened in 2017. “I tell everyone I know about it.â€
But over the past couple of years, something changed inside Villasis-Corbin's brain. Recipes seemed jumbled. Names got fuzzy. She'd sometimes zone out — for minutes at a time.Â
She went to her doctor.
Villasis-Corbin, 53, has Alzheimer's.
Around the world
As a teenager in Manila, Villasis-Corbin — who at 5-feet-8 inches, towers over the average Filipino — booked modeling gigs across Asia and Europe. She developed a taste for fashion and competed for the Miss Philippines crown.
Around then — the dates sometimes escape her — she met her first husband. She went to college, got married and had three babies in rapid succession.
After she graduated, Villasis-Corbin landed a job in risk management. She was on the road a lot, but when her team would get together in person, she came armed with staples: breads, cookies, cupcakes.
“I would bake for every meeting,†she said.
In her early 30s, she earned a master’s degree, went to work for a security firm and maintained a heavy travel schedule.
Then Villasis-Corbin’s marriage ended. She felt lost.
She took a leap, enrolling in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris to study the fundamentals of French pastries. She laminated so many layers of croissant, she could do it in her sleep. Her neurons were firing; her heart, mending.
“I collected myself,†Villasis-Corbin said. “I thought, ‘You know what? I’m OK on my own.’â€
After 18 months, reality beckoned. She needed to be closer to her kids again. She needed a steady paycheck.
It was back to business as usual — until 2011, when a friend from high school who had moved to the U.S. told Villasis-Corbin about a man she had met. He would be perfect for you, the friend said.
Villasis-Corbin was uninterested. She was just getting her life back. And the man lived in St. Louis — a speck on the map between Los Angeles and New York, cities that were more her speed.
Somehow, emails were exchanged anyway. Then, there were FaceTime calls, every morning and evening for three months. The man, a firefighter named Ken Corbin, flew to the Philippines and met her family. Her kids called him Uncle Ken.
“When she started dating him,†said her daughter Steff Legaspi, who lives in Manila, “we knew.â€
Corbin proposed on New Year’s Eve.
Making a home in Florissant
The couple married in 2013 and settled in Florissant. Villasis-Corbin’s job search kept hitting dead ends.
She’d never had nothing to do before. And she didn’t know anyone in St. Louis besides her husband.
So she baked. She knocked on her new neighbors’ doors, armed with confections.
“I realized that everyone loves lemon cake,†she said. “I was making lemon cake after lemon cake after lemon cake.â€
Word spread, and requests rolled in. Villasis-Corbin had an unexpected business — one that was starting to take over the house.
In 2017, the couple — now parents to a 1-year-old — poured their savings into the storefront.
There were days when Villasis-Corbin would arrive at 10 a.m. and leave at 1 o’clock the next morning. She was in heaven.
Customers turned into friends. She would bake for someone’s wedding, then their baby shower, then their little one’s first birthday.
“Everyone made me part of their lives,†Villasis-Corbin said.
Maureen Kennedy of North County became a weekly visitor. She marveled at it all: the spiced carrot cake that would appear on the menu every spring, the “sinful†chocolate, the swirls of icing that remind her of ocean waves.
“Her attention to detail is so exquisite,†said Kennedy.
It’s a characteristic that defines Villasis-Corbin. But in the past couple of years — she’s not sure when it first happened — details would elude her. There were no major baking disasters, no salt-for-sugar swaps.
She would hum along just fine, and then, out of nowhere, she would zone out, without even realizing she was zoning out. She called it “buffering.â€
She would be listing her shop's sandwich choices and draw a blank on “chicken salad.†She’d tell a story and forget someone’s name. Once, she left the bakery to buy avocados at a Schnucks grocery store. When she returned two hours later, she wasn’t sure where she had been or what had taken so long.
She blamed it on her ADHD, her busyness, being perpetually sleep-deprived.
She talked to her doctor and underwent a battery of tests. When she got the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, she didn’t believe it. She was too young.
“I thought, ‘This is a joke. How dare you? You’re wrong, you’re so wrong,’†she said.
The next chapter
Nearly 7 million Americans — almost 11% of those 65 and older — have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, according to the Mayo Clinic. About 230,000 people younger than 65, or one-tenth of 1% of the working-age population, have the disease.
Over the past few years, drugs have become available that temporarily manage the symptoms of dementia. But no treatments halt or reverse the formation of plaques and tangles on the brain, which gradually destroy a person’s memory and ability to function.
The prognosis is so bleak that most days, Villasis-Corbin pushes it out of her head. She has a son to raise and a husband to tend to. She’s eating healthier and trying to get more rest.
She’s determined that her customers will experience the same La Patisserie sparkle they always have. That’s led to adjustments. The bakery is open just three days a week now.
“Sometimes she has to work at a slower pace,†said Markel Harris, one of La Patisserie’s five part-time staffers.
Few others would notice the change: Villasis-Corbin’s platinum ponytail bobs up and down as she flits from the kitchen to the counter to a table set for tea. She laughs loudly — and often.
She jokingly says she is “fashionably forgetful.â€
But at night, when the colors dim into grays, her mind goes to darker places.
“I know the reality,†she said.
Last spring, Villasis-Corbin and her husband decided La Patisserie would close in December. And the family would relocate.
They want to be somewhere more relaxing, where they can prioritize time together and be closer to her grown children. Maybe somewhere in Europe, an old haunt from Villasis-Corbin’s jet-setting period. She’ll walk more, shop at open-air markets, sample new flavors.
And she will bake.