Shortly before this StoryCorps interview, Tennille Moore had been crying in a bathroom at Harold Washington College in downtown Chicago. Mumtaz Champsi, a fellow student at Harold Washington, didn’t know Tennille, but tried to comfort her. As the two continued to talk, they wandered over to the Chicago Cultural Center and into the StoryCorps booth, where they talked about grieving, and the kindness of strangers.

Bill Healy produces StoryCorps Chicago for WBEZ and teaches journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him @chicagoan.