Just when she was questioning if her loved ones should have come to Chicago, the matriarch of an immigrant family had a chance encounter that restored her hope that, maybe, her family could one day have the life they once had again.
It was late May and Mariser Fernandez was wandering Little Village, carrying her grandson, 2-year-old Jose Mathias. Fernandez, 40, had arrived in Chicago days before and was brought to a temporary shelter in the neighborhood but wound up on the street that day after the shelter staff wouldn’t let her grandson inside without his mother, who had left to find work out of state.
