CHICAGO – Former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and a group of University of Chicago graduate students he now teaches are reaching across the state line to help the battered steel town of Gary, Ind.

The initiative, announced Tuesday by the university’s Harris School of Public Policy, started with a phone call last year from Karen Freeman-Wilson to Daley as she was running for mayor of Gary. Her call for advice about what to do about abandoned buildings and crime led to a mentoring relationship between the elder statesman and the 51-year-old Gary native, who became the city’s first female mayor in January.

“I wouldn’t have expected more than one meeting,” she said Tuesday in a phone interview as she recalled the beginnings of the project with her fellow Democrat, who upon retirement became a distinguished senior fellow at the university’s Harris School. “He was the person to say, ‘I want to do more. I want to mentor you.’”