ROGERS PARK — As a lifelong Chicagoan with Mexican heritage, Estefania said she's been treated poorly because of her ethnicity before — but nothing like the "outright" harassment and intimidation she has experienced since early November, she said.
Three times since Nov. 10, the 25-year-old Rogers Park resident said she has been the target of racial remarks and increasingly scary attacks, with some perpetrators referencing President-elect Donald Trump.
Now, she wants others who have experienced similar things based on race, ethnicity or other personal attributes to speak out and report it to police.
"If this is happening to me, I'm sure it's happening to a lot more people — and maybe even worse," she said. "That's just scary, the fact that people think it's OK to do things like this, I just don't understand it. We're in a country where there [are] many different races."
"People need to stop pretending that racism is patriotism."
In the most recent incident on Jan. 4, Estefania, who asked only to use her first name, said she and her boyfriend feared for their lives after a man blocked her car from leaving a Walgreen's parking space, spit and hit the windows, used derogatory racial terms and attempted to open the doors.
Around 3:45 p.m. the couple pulled into the Walgreen's at Western and Granville Avenues in West Ridge and parked, apparently enraging a man who also wanted the space.
"He immediately got [out of] his car and began threatening us, and yelling discriminating profanities," she said. "He tried to open the driver's door, and then ran around my side and tried to open the passengers side. He kept yelling at us to get out of the car, and started punching our windows."
The woman said she and her boyfriend both called 911 twice and became especially fearful when the man began searching for something in his pockets and coat, then later searching under his car seat and in his glove compartment. They thought he could have been trying to retrieve a weapon.
Surrounded by other parked cars, she and her boyfriend waited as the man eventually went into the store, she said.
When he came back out, he wrote down her license plate, spit more and later left. The pair went into the store to pick up the item they'd come for and went to the Rogers Park Police station to file a report in-person when no officers showed at the Walgreen's, much to her dismay.
Chicago Police backed Estefania's account of the attack, saying the unknown man "banged on the victims' vehicle and spat on the window" during a verbal argument. No one is in custody.
The Walgreen's incident wasn't the first of its kind Estefania said she's experienced in recent months.
On Nov. 10, while riding a nearly empty Brown Line train car on her way home from work, she said three white men boarded the train and began intensely glaring at her.
One of the men eventually sat directly across from her and told her he was glad Trump had won the election and she "would pay soon enough."
Shaken, standing at 5-foot-2 and weighing about 100 pounds, Estefania said she did not want to engage the men and got off at the next stop.
Then, on Nov. 18 the Rogers Park resident said she and her beau had finished dinner at a local restaurant when they were heading home and were shouted at by a taxi driver, "Go f--- yourself" and "Go Trump."
Frustrated, Estefania said she called 911, who directed her to 311 saying it was not an emergency.
She filed a report through 311 on the phone, though she said she was told by the operator the manner could have been handled by 911 services.
Part of the reason Estefania said she felt compelled to speak out about her experiences is to not only bring it to the attention of the public and encourage others to speak up as well, but to make sure police take these types of experiences seriously now — not after someone gets hurt.
"Had this guy had a gun, we would have been dead in that parking lot," she said. "It's just scary to think that. ...With as much anger as this guy had, if he had [a weapon] we would have been hurt."
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