ROCHESTER, N.Y. — She'd just turned down the George Floyd trial on her living room TV and was ready to settle in next to her 90-year-old mother on the couch, when Wanda Ridgeway got another text.

It was the third like it in just 20 hours.

What You Need To Know

  • Wanda Ridgeway is executive director of Rise Up Rochester!, a nonprofit that promotes nonviolence and supports crime victims and families who've lost loved ones to homicide

  • Ridgeway and her family were helped 11 years ago when her nephew was shot and killed

  • Ridgeway announced her bid for a seat in the Monroe County Legislature. She's vying for the 21st District seat, held now by Rachel Barnhart

"I just got a notification from my homicide team," Ridgeway said. "Alright, I'll be back, Mommy."

"Been some terrible shootings in the streets," Corine Charles told her daughter.

"I know," Ridgeway said. "But we'll find a way to help.”

And no matter the time or the place, when Ridgeway receives a text or phone call informing her of a violent death in Rochester, she goes.

On this day, she headed to North Clinton Avenue, near Clifford, in the midst of that part of the city's open-air drug market.

"They jumped him," Ridgeway told a member of her Rise Up Rochester! network. "And he reached for his gun and shot. He's a biker."

Ridgeway's voice leaks exhaustion. She made trips like this to 15 homicides in March, one of the deadliest months of violence in Rochester in years.

As she brushes against yellow police tape that established the crime scene's perimeter, she updates her report on the phone.

"The victim's still on the ground right here," she said.

Ridgeway normally waits for investigators at the scene before moving toward the crime scene to meet family members shocked into realities of violent crime.

With experience that comes with losing her nephew to gunfire 11 years ago, Ridgeway helps families find housing and services. She also welcomes them into RiseUp Rochester's ever-growing ranks of victims of violence.

"I grew up on Rauber Street. This is where I grew up. Spent all my childhood. I know what it's like," Ridgeway said. "This is getting tiring."

Because she's lived where she's lived and knows who she knows, Ridgeway provides one of those behind-the-scenes services most who've never been near a homicide scene may not even know exists.

"We're losing way too many people," Ridgeway said. "But this generation, you know, it's different. Like a different world.”

Providing families peace through prayer is another way Ridgeway keeps working. Beyond rallies for social justice, she hosts prayer gatherings and vigils for homicide families. That included a citywide, sidewalk prayer initiative in early April, after the homicide wave subsided.

"I do it for my students, for my grandchildren,” Ridgeway said. “They need to have good neighborhoods. They need to feel safe."

But Wanda Ridgeway, school staffer, mother, grandmother, and bringer of peace to the violence-afflicted, also sees little's changing. So this winter, she committed to another service.

Ridgeway will run in the Democratic primary for Monroe County's 21st Legislative District seat, a seat held by Rachel Barnhart, who recently won her first full term.

"Something's gotta change,” she said.