Each week, syracuse.com will look back at some of our most important and valuable journalism from the previous week. Here are six stories for the week of Oct. 5, 2025.
Meet ‘Aunt Rhonda,’ whose years of persistence will bring a store to a Syracuse food desert
Government help and cheap rent were not enough to convince A.K. Kaid to open a grocery store in Syracuse’s Valley neighborhood. Instead, the Buffalo entrepreneur’s decision to invest in an impoverished area shunned by corporate supermarket chains came down to one person: Rhonda Vesey. For more than five years, Vesey — a soft-spoken daughter of a 1950s Civil Rights pioneer — drove a relentless grassroots campaign to replace the long-shuttered Tops Friendly Markets in the Valley Plaza, leaving the neighborhood without a source of fresh food. It worked.
How Syracuse players spent their first big paycheck: ‘It made me feel like I did something right’…