Denise Casares spent nine hours a day for a week chained to a huge oak on the street outside her family's home to try to save it from being removed. But in the end, the village cut down the tree.
Casares said she tried to tell village authorities that they'd be served with a petition but it was too little too late.
"Did they even check to see if there were squirrels or birds or anything living in it? They just tore it down like it was nothing," Casares said. "The house has a lot of memories, and the tree meant a lot to me." But the village explained the decades-old tree and a few others nearby on village property needed to be cut to correct curbs and ponding as part of a road repaving project.
Mayor Peter Cavallaro said the village had no choice but to take it down after Denise missed the deadline of last Friday to make a decision. She was given the option to pay for drainage work and assume responsibility for the large oak should it fall and hurt someone. "It's a frivolous claim — it's village property and something we have to do properly to pave the road," Cavallaro said. "We don't remove trees willy-nilly.
Denise is asking for community support and encourages residents to show up at Thursday night's village meeting. She is calling for a change of leadership. "We tried to get little twigs to see if I can root them and whatever leaves that I could find so I could seed them," she said.