A stranger enters Sally Chwiecko's kitchen and everything is as it should be. A single-serving teapot idles on the old gas stove and a potholder hangs like a portrait on the far wall. An ill-mannered clutch of lilies of the valley droops over the sides of a tall water glass - and Chwiecko snatches at them, a nervous mother insisting that her brood please mind their manners and sit up straight.

"I used to love to go dancing," she says. "We had these beer joints on every corner. Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday they had dancing. So I was a big dancer, and I would always go to all the dances. I'd come home 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. By myself. I used to walk home from Clinton Avenue. Today, I'd be afraid."

The flash in Chwiecko's eyes and the occasional colorful invective belie her conservative blue sweater and the religious adornments found throughout her home. This 89-year-old great-grandmother's got a six-pack of Bud in the fridge, behind the salad dressing and green tea.

"I like the car races," she says. "I used to go to Watkins Glen. With guys on motorcycles. We used to drive up there - no helmets, nothing. It's rough! Oh, we had a lot of fun."

Chwiecko is one of an unknown number of elderly white women who - by choice or by circumstance - still call the inner city home. They didn't - or couldn't - leave during the white flight of the 1960's and 1970's and, in many cases, now live in neighborhoods that look and feel much different than they did decades before. It's culture shock in reverse. Many have also been repeatedly victimized.

"The neighborhood changed around them," says John Klofas, professor of criminal justice at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "A lot of people got out. A lot of people couldn't get out. After a certain time period, there's no way they could get out, because their property began to decline in value. They couldn't sell it."

Klofas describes a hidden, isolated, easily-victimized population who live their lives behind locked doors, rarely venturing out after dusk. But these women can also be the foundation of their neighborhood - the anchors, living histories and protectors.

"For the most part, they are very stubborn and very independent," says Joan Roby-Davison, former head of Group 14621. "Because of both their investment in terms of owning the property, as well as their emotional investment - ‘This is my home' - they really don't want to leave."

Some of these women still live in the ethnic enclaves settled by their ancestors. Chwiecko's parents emigrated from Poland in 1910 and bought a house in the city - the same house Chwiecko still lives in today. That area of the city has a rich Polish history, still evident in the street names. And the weekly Polish Mass at St. Stanislaus Church draws about 300 people, says the Rev. Adam Ogorzaly, the church's pastor.

"You see these different ethnic groups that moved through the neighborhood, and you still see some of those family members that have been there 50, 60 years," Roby-Davison says. "Some of them are in their 80's and 90's at this point."

The city's senior population tends to be older, frailer, and of lesser means than their suburban counterparts, she says. It's also disproportionately female, as women tend to outlive men. According to the Center for Governmental Research, there were 9,325 Monroe County women ages 65 and older living alone as of 2000. And there were nearly 5,000 women ages 65 and older living below the poverty line in Monroe County in 1999. 

"My concern is that there's a significant number out there that we just don't know about," Roby-Davison says. "Who may be very isolated - physically and emotionally and socially. They could be at even greater risk, because nobody knows they're there."

Marie Budnik, 87, is eating the biggest apple fritter I've ever seen. Not eating, really. Just sort of picking around the edges. The gang at the Carter Street Community Center has wrapped-up a round of Pay Me - a rummy-style card game - and they're fortifying themselves before bingo.

This senior group meets at the center on Tuesdays for a half-day of fellowship, food, and activities. Some of its members have moved out of the city, but they come back to see their friends from the old neighborhoods. Today, they talk about how the city has changed.

"So many robberies and murders and stuff: it's terrible," Budnik says. "Everything has changed. You can't go backward, y'know?"

Years ago, Budnik walked back-and-forth from the place she rented on St. Paul to her job at Bausch & Lomb on North Goodman Street. She wouldn't do that today, she says.

"Hudson Avenue is terrible," she says. "It's boarded up. Joseph Avenue is nothing like it used to be. None of the streets are."

The women pin a lot of the blame on renters and landlords who don't take care of their properties.

"I don't like it, but what can I do about it?" says Irene Sek, who is 75. "I don't like the way it's changed."

People just aren't as diligent about their homes and their neighborhoods as they used to be, Chwiecko says. She sometimes spruces up the vacant house next door - washing the side that faces her home and painting around the basement windows.

"I think people were cleaner, and they liked to plant flowers and trees and make everything look beautiful. And they don't do that today," she says. "Throwing their garbage and papers and everything all over. But even if you tell them, nobody listens. They're just not brought up the same way we were: to pick up and keep everything nice and clean."

The senior women who still live in the city sometimes feel like strangers in their own neighborhoods. Their friends have died or moved away and, in many cases, have been replaced by people of different races and cultures.

"I don't bother that much with them," Chwiecko says. "Most of the neighbors here are Puerto Rican. Some are from Cuba."

Chwiecko misses the camaraderie of the past.

"We would come out in the front of the house, and everybody else would be there in summertime and we would sit around and talk about our families and things," she says. "And Sunday afternoons they would sit around in the back yards. Most of the men would bring out their homemade beer and wine."

When the demographics of these neighborhoods changed, many women found themselves increasingly isolated and unable to integrate, Klofas says. This causes some to see the women as easy targets, he says.

"You're stuck with this vicious crime crossing racial lines all in the same neighborhood," Klofas says. "It's very controversial. Very difficult stuff."

The first time Sally Chwiecko was robbed, someone climbed in through her kitchen window in the middle of the night.

"I heard somebody walking and I just sat up in the bed and I said, 'Who's there?' And no one answered," she says. "But I saw a figure of a man, walking. And he already unplugged my television and had the door open - y'know, ready to walk out with the TV."

Chwiecko's interjection disrupted the intruder's plans.

"The only thing he took was my Southern Comfort," she says. "A full quart!"

The second incident was more sinister. Chwiecko saw a teenage boy outside, bleeding from his forehead. She felt sorry for him, so she invited him inside and gave him a towel and an aspirin. She'd just returned from shopping, and her purse and groceries were in easy reach.

"He asked me if he could go to the bathroom," she says. "So I says, 'Well, you can use the cellar bathroom.' He went down the cellar and was calling me to come. He says it's full of water. Now, I never had water in the cellar. I says, 'Well, no. I'm not coming down. You better come back up.' And I think I was just lucky I didn't go down there."

Some time after the boy left, Chwiecko noticed that her purse was missing. It was found later, on Norton Street, empty.

"After that, I figured, no more," Chwiecko says. "I'll give him a kick in the ass instead. I'm not nice anymore. You've got to be careful."

You don't have to search to find stories like these.

Marie Budnik fell asleep watching TV, with the door open but the screen locked. Someone cut through the screen.

"I woke up and there he stands over me, with a mask over his head," she says. And I screamed at him: 'What are you doing in my house?!' And he run off like the devil."

Lottie Gabrych has lived in the city since 1951.

"My car's been stolen," she says. "I've been robbed, probably, three times. But part of that was my fault because I let him come into my house. I've had my purse stolen."

The women are afraid, Roby-Davison says, but stubborn and resilient, too. She remembers a pair of elderly women who'd purposely sit on the front porch when drug activity started heating up in their neighborhood.

"These two ladies would just go out there with their iced tea or their lemonade, and just watch what was going on," Roby-Davison says. "And the guys that were dealing just got tired of being constantly watched. They just went away."

Drug dealers told another woman that they'd burn down her house if she called the police.

"She wouldn't get out," Roby-Davison says. "She told me, 'This is my home.' She wanted the drug dealers to be removed. Who wouldn't? They don't want to be driven from their homes."

Lottie Gabrych stays in the city because she likes being close to her church and she's friendly with a couple of her neighbors.

"Where am I gonna go, this late in life?" she says. "I have no intention of moving. I feel if I moved out, even if I bought a house, I would probably be alone. This way, I've got a neighbor that's very great. If this neighbor wasn't there, I would move."

Gabrych's neighborhood changed so gradually, she says, that she didn't notice it when it was happening.

Irene Sek lives with her son. She stays because the neighborhood's gone downhill, she says, and her son will lose a lot of money if he tries to sell their home.

"I don't go out at night," Sek says. "I'm not afraid during the day by myself. My son's working during the day. Sometimes, when he works nights, I'm afraid. But so far, so good."

When these older people die, their homes sometimes become abandoned or stuck in probate or trust, which can take years to sort out, Roby-Davison says, and leads to even further deterioration of the neighborhoods.

"I've seen houses knocked down that didn't even have any wiring left in them," she says. "They kind of fished out anything that might get value."

Chwiecko's parents bought their home for $2,000. Today, it's worth about $33,000, according to the City of Rochester. Chwiecko plans to leave the house to her son, who'll probably sell it, she says.

"If you could sell it. You're not going to get anything for it," she says.

Her children are always pressuring her to move, Chwiecko says. But she resists.

"Where am I going to find a place like I got? No place," she says. "Why should I pay $1,000 a month for an apartment when I can live for $1,000 a year? I'm very smart, as far as math. I do all my figuring myself."

Chwiecko lives with bars on the basement windows and sleeps with an iron bar on the front door. She sees drug activity regularly on the street out front.

"They make believe they're shaking hands," she says. "Like they think I'm so dumb."

But Chwiecko's father brewed whiskey in the basement during Prohibition. She's close to church and shopping.

And Sally Chwiecko's peonies are budding as big as radishes in the back yard.