At 71 years old, Kathye Dawoudi isn’t afraid of waiting alone at a dark Chicago bus stop after her nightly swim class. She tells off people who eye the bulging purse perched on her walker. And she doesn’t hole up inside her Auburn-Gresham home even though her grandson was shot to death last year.
“I probably need to be (more concerned), but I’m not,” Dawoudi said on a recent morning at a senior cafe and center in the South Side’s Chatham neighborhood. “I’m not going to put that on my mind. … Fear can be smelt.”