Bill McLean

Romania native Florin Mitran wakes up smiling every day in the United States. You would too if you embraced each day like Mitran does. “A day to me is a gift,” says the 49-year-old Mitran, who coaches the varsity boys’ golf team at Highland Park High School and serves as a teacher/coach at Township High

After David Grossman took his very first bite of a premium hamburger at Epic Burger in 2008, a math term immediately came to mind. “It wasn’t just great tasting,” recalls Grossman, who had also ordered fries and a strawberry milkshake for lunch at the eatery’s first Chicago location. “It also had a perfect bun-to-burger ratio.”

Evanston resident and historical trombonist Paul Von Hoff has performed at a wide range of venues, from a spacious music hall in New York City to the cozy confines of a room at a local elementary school. But if you think he’d wing it in front of fidgety youngsters and take the concert in front

When Christina Lepri-Stringer was 9 and the only child actor in the Steppenwolf Theatre production The Wolf Lullaby, she had to learn to speak with an Australian accent. Years later, as a Boston College Theater/ English double major, the Chicago native interned at the Theatre Royal in Bath, England, where she worked with actors in