To Donna Opalacz and her neighbors, Tresa McCauley was a woman who defined independence.
“My son installed her furnace a couple of years ago, and as he’s putting in the new one, she says, ‘Wait a minute, Josh,’ ” recalled Opalacz, who lived next door to McCauley for 25 years. “She runs downstairs to get paint, and she runs upstairs and starts painting the wall really quick to make it look nice … She took a lot of pride in everything she did.”
As news of the 89-year-old Mokena woman’s stabbing death spread this week, her close-knit group of neighbors at the Pheasant Ridge condominium complex is reeling from the loss of the woman they considered their resident mother.
“My wife and I, we called her Ma,” said Terry Prokop, who’s lived there since 1973. “She was just a sweetheart.”
McCauley’s daughter, 57-year-old Gaye Wern, has been charged with murder in her mother’s death, something that McCauley’s neighbors are struggling to comprehend.
“I did not expect her daughter to have done that. That was the furthest thing from my mind … Something must have happened up here,” Prokop said, pointing to his head. “She’s probably devastated now thinking about what she did.”
Until last fall, neighbors said, McCauley had lived alone in her condo for 25 years, moving from New Lenox after her husband died. She had the spirit and energy of someone years younger, they said, working as a housecleaner into her mid-80s and attending church every week.
“She was a very godly woman, and she really tried to work with all of us, too, to make us better people,” Opalacz said.
Patience and kindness were McCauley’s other trademarks, neighbors said.
“We were always parking in her spot, and I was like, ‘She’s going to kill us,’ ” said Kelly Anhalt, Opalacz’s daughter-in-law, who lived in the complex for a few years. “She never got mad.”
McCauley loved to feed the hummingbirds in her yard and tend to her flower garden, Opalacz said, and Opalacz and her family would often come over to McCauley’s porch to swing and indulge in McCauley’s favorite candy, orange slices.
After a fall in her home last year sent McCauley into the hospital, Wern tended to her mother and eventually came to live with her in the condo, Opalacz said.
“Gaye slept at the hospital; she never left her side,” she said. “She stepped up when she needed to be there.”
Wern was McCauley’s only child, neighbors said, and she was devoted to her mother, even feeding the birds at McCauley’s condo while her mother recovered. She also threw McCauley a big 89th birthday party in August, they said, and in the past few years she and her former husband, Michael, had bought McCauley not one, but two cars.
According to Opalacz, McCauley said Wern had been struggling since her 2008 divorce and family members had even expressed concerns about Wern forcefully grabbing her mother’s arm and then hugging her tight moments later.
“Somebody said, ‘Gaye needs to go to the hospital,’” Opalacz said.
Now, as the residents of Pheasant Ridge grieve for their friend and neighbor, they’re turning to their decades of memories for comfort.
“She was such a good woman,” Opalacz said. “We know that God is with her, definitely, right now.”
Visitation for Tresa McCauley is set for 3 to 8 p.m. today at Kurtz Memorial Chapel, 65 Old Frankfort Way, Frankfort. McCauley’s funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at the chapel.
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services
With the Microsoft – Yahoo deal getting the go-ahead from the US and the EU, both companies are now looking at the next stage of the process. While the deal still needs approval from some smaller markets, the major hurdles are gone. What this means is that users are going to start seeing the actual effects of the search deal, Bing sea… (
