Beyond Borders Cafe in Flossmoor reopened Saturday after being closed for less than a week after a driver crashed into the building.
Co-owner Christopher Zarozny, who owns the business with his wife Jennifer Zarozny, credited the fast recovery to the support of the community.
The day after the crash, Jan. 13, community members and other volunteers joined the staff and owners of the cafe in cleaning up the damaged space.
Zarozny feels an “overwhelming sense of gratitude,” he said.
“If it was up to my wife and I to clean up and restore the space, it would’ve probably taken us a good three weeks, maybe longer,” Zarozny said. “But because of the community’s response, people that we don’t even know showed up to help clean up the place the next day. So really, it took us a solid day to clean the inside of the cafe.”
The storefront is still not fully repaired, though the cafe is once more operating as normal. The crash shattered the storefront windows and damaged the front wall of the building, and fixing that will be up to the building owner and property manager, Zarozny said. Until then, the front window remains boarded up.
“We did everything we could on our own,” Zarozny said. “Now the aesthetics from the outside in need to be repaired by the property management people.”
Marion Bryer, one of three employees who’s worked at the cafe since it opened in August, said she felt sick to her stomach when she heard about the crash.
“It’s our little shop, our little family,” Bryer said. “I think some of us were almost in tears, cleaning.”
Bryer said the hood emblem from the crashed car was found all the way in the back of the cafe.
“People came in to help clean,” Bryer said. “It was like, ‘Who are you? I don’t know who you are, but here’s a brush, have at it.'”
Bryer was “ecstatic” to have the cafe open again, she said. The day after the cleanup, she came in on her own to set her workstation up just the way she liked it, she said.
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Bryer said. “And the community’s been so supportive of us here.”
The village of Flossmoor’s statement on the crash said the driver was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
Flossmoor police Chief Carl Estelle said charges in the case are pending, awaiting the outcome of an investigation by the Suburban Major Accident Reconstruction Team.
Estelle said the police are also awaiting a medical evaluation of the driver. The driver is not capable of answering questions, which complicates the process of the investigation, Estelle said.
Zarozny said he and his wife are not interested in pressing any charges against the driver or the owner of the vehicle. To him, he said, the consequences of their decisions are sufficient.
“I don’t believe that us putting any more on those two people is going to achieve anything,” Zarozny said.
Homewood police said Wednesday its officers were not pursuing the driver at the time of the accident. The department previous said there was an internal investigation underway when asked about owner’s statements the crash happened during a police pursuit.
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