Edith Macefield is stubborn. Man, is she stubborn.

That's what her mother told her when she was a little girl back in the 1920s. It's a characteristic that has followed her all her life. Now that unrelenting stubbornness has won the 86-year-old woman admirers throughout Ballard.

Macefield refused to sell her little old house where she has lived since 1966 to developers, forcing them to build an entire five-story project, which includes a grocery store, fitness club and parking garage, around her.

She was offered $1 million to leave. She turned it down flat.

"I don't want to move. I don't need the money. Money doesn't mean anything," she said last week.