Having access to money means comfort and security for millions of Americans. However, there are some people who simply do not value money as much as others do. One such person is 84-year-old Edith Macefield. Macefield was offered a whopping one million dollars for her home so a developer could knock it down and build a mall so people could buy stuff and go shopping – but Edith Macefield refused to sell her property and remained defiant despite the high offering price.

The 84-year-old woman did not want to let go of her 100-year-old home that was built in Ballard, Washington. She knew she was sitting on a valuable piece of property, and despite being offered a million dollars for the plot of land and her home, she refused the offer and decided to remain living in her home as the developer went forward with their plans and built the shopping mall around her home.

Social media users branded Macefield a hero for defiantly standing against the capitalistic developers who wanted to level her home so they could build a shopping center around it. According to the internet via BostWiki, Macefield had a history of defying authority even when she was underage. According to an internet report, Macefield left home when she was sixteen and joined the Army, lying to her mother about her conscription and telling her family that she was going to college. Instead, she was shipping across the pond to England to fight for democracy and freedom in the name of America.

When the Army learned that Macefield was underage, she was booted from service. Instead of fighting in the Army, she helped the war effort in England by taking in war orphans. She also played some music with the Royal Army’s marching band and went on tour with the official group of the British Army.

After World War II, Macefield moved to Ballard, a suburb of Seattle, Washington, in 1952. The home she purchased was already nearly half a century old, but she found the place to have a lot of character, and she fell in love with the property instantly.

By 2007, the property developers were offering Macefield a lot of money to sell her home and go into retirement. She refused their generous offer, forcing her and the developers into a stalemate. Despite her resistance, the developers built around her home, buying up every other property along 46th Street. They built a massive retail and office complex around her home, blocking her access to everything in the area..

When Macefield first moved to Ballard, she was living next to a peaceful lake. Now she has a huge gray industrial complex surrounding her home that will never go away.

Many people see Macefield’s problem as the same as the character in Disney Pixar’s movie Up, in which the old man has a city built around his home. So, people put up balloons for her.