Cancer survivor attacked, robbed near Chicago currency exchange

CHICAGO -- Erika Santiago, a cancer survivor, was attacked from behind and robbed this week after leaving a Chicago currency exchange.

"I couldn't breathe, I couldn't yell. I was like what do you want?" Santiago said.

Santiago has bruises and cuts all over her body. She said that while at the exchange on Wednesday a man was behind her in line. She left and walked down the sidewalk with $1,000: her rent money and extra cash.

I seen behind me-- I was like I just saw you, what do you want?! He said, I want your money," she recalled/

Just down the block, Chicago pastor Craig Priestley and volunteers were fixing fences.

"I heard someone screaming. I could tell she was on the ground, someone was holding her down," Pastor Priestley said.

"I'm like stop! And he said if you don't give me the money, I'm going to kill you. And I was like, here's the money," Santiago said. "I started yelling and fighting back."

"I went heading over that direction. About the time we got there, this man was running south on Spaulding," said Priestley.

Santiago was wounded, but alive.

"It just happened to me because they were watching me, but it can happen to anyone," she said.

"I told Erika that this was God's sovereign grace that put us on the block at the same exact time she was walking through there, and if this had happened when we were not there things could have gotten worse," Priestley said.

Priestley said he is now helping Santiago and her three teenagers with food and necessities while she recovers.