All posts tagged "Extendedfamily"

CHICAGO — Relatives of people taken hostage by the terrorist group Hamas called for increased efforts to release more than 200 captives during a vigil held Wednesday evening in a Chicago synagogue. Shani Segal, whose cousin and husband were taken hostage during the initial Oct. 7 attack, called on the U.S. government and international community to step up the pressure on Hamas to release the captives. “We want the whole world to stand with us and to help free the hostages,” she said. “She was such an advocate for human rights,” Segal later said of her cousin, Rimon Kirsht. “She stood for every......

A retired Campbell Soup Co. employee who helped break racial barriers at the company’s flagship plant in downtown Camden, New Jersey, Daisy Riley began celebrating her 100th birthday this month in grand style in her Parkside neighborhood. Although she never believed she would reach this milestone, Riley has embraced her new status as a centenarian and credits healthy living and daily meditations with God for her longevity. “I don’t even feel like I’m 100. I know I am,” she said during an interview. “I say ‘Lord, I thank you!’” Wearing a rhinestone-studded tiara and a sash, Riley was heralded o......

In 2015, Keetonia Wilson fell at her son’s football game in Miami and broke her arm. She had reconstructive surgery, but it didn’t go well and she ended up with major nerve damage and was diagnosed with chronic pain syndrome. At the same time, Wilson, 39, and her family couldn’t keep up with Miami’s rising rent prices, so they relocated to Orlando. Wilson and her children stayed with family for awhile before moving into their own apartment in the Goldenrod area. Wilson has been unable to work since her fall and has remained on a fixed income, living off disability. In February 2022, her landlo......

CHICAGO — On a winter evening a little over a decade ago, as their husbands were busy cooperating against the most wanted cartel boss in the world, Valerie Gaytan and Vivianna Lopez were driving around Chicago’s North Side with more than $4 million in cash in their SUV. The daughters of Chicago cops, Gaytan and Lopez had grown up in similar neighborhoods but on seemingly separate paths. Gaytan, street smart and tough, started running drugs as a teenager, spent time in prison, opened a successful beauty salon and was romantically linked to some of the city’s top gang kingpins. Lopez, meanwhile,......

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As a boy in Afghanistan, Rezwan Kohistani dreamed of being a respected doctor and helping people. When he and his family escaped war-torn Kabul last August, his parents hoped resettling to the United States would bring their oldest son closer to that dream and give his five siblings a chance at a quality education in a safe place. Maybe they’d end up in Dallas, where extended family already lived. Or Los Angeles. Either city would give them the emotional support and community they needed. But they landed in Webb City, a southwest Missouri town of about 12,000 people that is ......

CHICAGO — Each time a police siren wailed or an airplane whirred overhead, Olena Raczkiewycz would relive the terror of her last few days in Ukraine, when Russian tanks and bombs besieged her country. This sensation lasted for the first month or so after her late February escape from Kyiv. The everyday innocuous sounds that might mimic an air raid alert or rockets launching could plunge her into a state of turmoil. Although she’s now in Chicago and safe, the trauma of fleeing her home amid war still lingers. “I feel panic inside,” said 43-year-old Raczkiewycz, closing her eyes and shaking her ......