Hidden People
Instructions
1. Find a portrait in the slideshow.
2. Copy the picture below.  
3. Using the questions from the STEAR handout, create a profile of this person. Make sure you know who this person is through and through by the end.
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First name: Blanche 
Last name: Anders
Age: 83




 Blanche speaks with a voice that sounds like a cross between the kindly grandmother she is and a college professor lecturing about subjects near and dear to her heart, like her grandkids and her late husband, whom she always just calls “Dad” or “Grandpa”. People who know her think she hasn’t said her husband’s name in over 50 years. Since she was born in the south and lived there until she was 21, her Louisiana accent is thick, and she tends to call everyone “Darlin’.”


Only she knows why she hasn’t said his name in 52 years. His name, while unimportant, is a liability. Her husband was a member of the Italian-American mafia, and a high-ranking one. When the family was busted 55 years ago, her husband broke the code of Omerta and testified against the don, landing him in prison for life. For their whole family’s safety, the government put them into witness protection, changing their names and their two sons' names. Unfortunately, not 2 years after the trial, the Family had somehow gotten hold of her husband's new name and dispatched some people to deal with the two of them. The men got her husband but missed Blanche and her two kids, hiding in the basement. Their kids were young at the time, so Blanche always played off the death as a random gang shooting, for her and the kids' sake. She changed her and the kids' names again and moved to a new state. 


Blanche always has a positive effect on other people, either through baking, storytelling, or just a gentle grandmotherly hug. In her neighborhood in suburban Seattle, she owns a small bakery that she runs alone, as well as a community thrift store that donates most of the profits to local animal shelters. She is looked up to around the city as a generous, wholesome figure.