Senior community fulfills Grayslake woman's wish to see sisters again

Mary Perucca, an 85-year-old resident of Travanse Living at Grayslake, was beginning to think she would never see her three younger sisters again.

Because of her health, Perucca hadn't seen her siblings since 2015 and wasn't even able to attend her eldest sister's funeral in 2017. She missed them terribly.

"Times were very, very tough when I was little because of the depression," Mary Perucca said. "So we were real close because that's all we had."

But on Tuesday, the staff at the senior living community orchestrated a long-overdue reunion. The three sisters were driven from Indiana to see Perucca.

"I just had kind of resigned myself to thinking that I had already seen them the last time," Perucca said Tuesday. "And now I get to do it again."

The reunion happened because Perucca's daughter Linda Perucca wrote an essay about how badly her mother wanted to see her sisters and entered it in a Christmas wish competition hosted by Travanse.

Perucca and her sisters would have met up sooner, but bad weather kept them apart until Tuesday afternoon.

The three sisters will receive a six-night hotel stay courtesy of Travanse.

The siblings also will see "Million Dollar Quartet" together at the Marriott in Lincolnshire.

"There is no greater gift than family, which is why we are so excited to make such a wish come true," said Chris Andersen, Travanse Living at Grayslake's executive director.

• Daily Herald photographer John Starks contributed to this report