GREECE, N.Y.—On this balmy June evening in upstate New York, a cluster of news trucks parked along a leafy residential street in Rochester’s north end is about the only indication that something has gone awry.

Reporters mutter into cellphones as they pace down the otherwise sleepy stretch of road outside the house with the American flag and perfectly manicured lawn. Beneath the porch awning of this working-class home, the front door swings open as a cordless phone left on the porch begins to ring.

“Another call,” says Amanda Klein Romig, 39, rolling her eyes as she hurries toward the table, plunking down her beer can as she reaches toward her notebook to schedule yet another interview for the day to come.

Meanwhile, Karen Klein, Amanda’s mother and the source of all this commotion, frets over the parched flower baskets suspended from her porch awning. “I just bought these yesterday, I swear,” the 68-year-old says, hoisting her makeshift watering can — a two-litre plastic pop bottle — to drench the baskets of wilted red blooms.

Partially deaf in both ears, Klein is a woman in a world of her own, tuned out from the endless phone calls and chatter among her children and young grandchildren who have gathered at her home to help manage the fallout from what has become a particularly trying, life-changing event.

It was last Monday, on one of her last shifts as a bus monitor before the end of the school year, and Klein was ready for a break.

She had strategically seated herself in the bus’ second-to-last row during the ride home from school when a group of Grade 7 boys near the back of the bus began to hurl profanity-laced insults in her direction.

At one point during the brutal 10-minute encounter, captured on one student’s cellphone, a boy said that if he were to plunge a knife into Klein’s stomach, he could cut through her “like butter.” As tears streamed down her face, another boy asked Klein for her home address so he could urinate on her door.

Photos:Town rallies after bullying incident

“You don’t have a family because they all killed themselves because they don’t want to be near you,” said yet another boy — an especially heinous remark as Klein lost her eldest son to suicide nearly a decade ago.

Klein says she did her best to ignore the pack of bullies, now identified as four students from Athena Middle School here in the northwestern Rochester suburb of Greece — and went home Monday afternoon without reporting the incident to authorities. She didn’t think reporting the kids would change anything, she says.

A day later, however, someone posted the video of the attack on YouTube and Klein’s abuse became the world’s business.

The video, a shocking display of human behaviour viewed nearly six million times on YouTube, sparked widespread outrage. One of the boys reportedly received more than 1,000 death threats, forcing the Greece Police Department to provide protection for each of the four students and their families. Those families continued to receive “extra attention” from police on Saturday, according to Greece police Capt. Steve Chatterton.

With a global audience reacting in anger and disbelief, the video has hit especially hard at home in Greece, a postwar suburb of about 96,000 people that hugs Lake Ontario’s southern shore. Thrust into the spotlight, the community is the epicentre of a scandal wrought by a small group of foul-mouthed children.

“Needless to say, it’s been a rough couple of days here in the Greece community,” said town supervisor John Auberger during an anti-bullying rally held in Klein’s honour at a local school on Friday evening.

Among the 150 people who attended Friday’s rally were Kristine Demo-Vazquez and daughter Alyssa, 13, who travelled from the nearby Rochester suburb of Henrietta to support both Klein and the anti-bullying cause. Like others in the crowd, Demo-Vazquez said she hoped her children would learn from others’ mistakes.

“We watched (the video) with our kids so that they see the things going on, what kids their age have done,” said Demo-Vazquez, describing the horror and anger she felt when she saw the boys tormenting the bus monitor.

Klein, who first heard about the footage when she was called to the school district’s headquarters on Wednesday morning, has yet to watch the video in full — and “I probably never will,” she says.

Instead, the self-described homebody and grandmother of eight who spends her free time making crafts and playing Internet games has spent the last few days adapting to a new reality.

A fundraising campaign launched last week by Toronto’s Max Sidorov, who said he felt “heartbroken” by the video and wanted to help send Klein on vacation, had raised $630,000 by Saturday evening. And the generosity continues to flow. According to son Brian, 46, the family received a call from Disney earlier in the week offering an all-expenses-paid cruise. One stranger from Long Island, N.Y., offered Klein a car, and another offered her a visit to a vacation spot in Maui.

It’s all a bit much, admits Klein, whose modest life has been defined by hard work and punctuated by tragedy.

Born in Rochester, Klein and her family moved to a house in Greece during her early childhood. It was there she met and fell in love with her next-door neighbour, Ken, whom everyone called “Chip.” The pair married when she was 19 and had four children. About 17 years ago, Chip died suddenly at 52 after suffering a heart attack.

Less than a decade later, Klein’s eldest son, Rusty, shot and killed himself after struggling with a drinking problem. He was 38 at the time. Klein’s youngest child, Amanda, was in labour in hospital at the time of his suicide and Klein had to break the news.

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Klein began driving school buses for the Greece Central District School Board about 23 years ago. Just over two years ago, however, she failed her driving test (partially because of her hearing problems, she was told) and was forced to move from behind the wheel to a position as a bus monitor.

Since then, the 68-year-old’s life has fallen into a predictable rhythm — starting her bus monitoring job at 7 a.m., heading home later in the morning to eat, nap, respond to emails and play a few online games, and then returning to work at 1:30 p.m. for her afternoon shift.

Working just under five hours a day, five days a week, she earns just over $15,500 a year, enough to support the minimalist lifestyle she’s grown accustomed to over the years.

“I just stay home, go on my computer and do my crafts. I don’t go out that much socially,” says Klein, noting that she did go out for breakfast every Wednesday during the school year, “but that’s the only thing I ever had scheduled.”

She also tries to keep her shopping habits in check, she says, pointing to the heaping teddy bear collection she’s amassed in her living room over the years. “It’s been four years since I bought a bear and that’s really good for me,” she says.

With Klein’s fund continuing to climb, Brian (who lives at home) says his family hoped to hire an accountant to help Klein decide how to manage her new fortune. Klein, however, has ideas of her own.

“I like travelling and … I mean, I’d like to retire, so maybe I will,” she says, noting that she might discuss retirement options with her employer over the summer.

With her face splashed across the local newspaper’s front page two days in a row, the phone still ringing off the hook with calls from reporters and supporters, and town appearances booked for the next few days, Klein says it’s hard to imagine her life returning to a “boring” routine. It’s great, she says, but she worries her new-found fame will disrupt her daily errands, what with fellow Grecians now able to recognize her.

“I wasn’t a celebrity. I wasn’t in the public eye until now, and now I don’t know what to do,” the grandmother says, a sneaky smirk spreading across her face. “Everybody wants hugs. How will I remember all their names? I’m afraid to go back to Wegmans shopping.”

As she walks through a kitchen and living room now awash with flower arrangements from supporters across the country, the smile fades from Klein’s face as her thoughts return to the traumatic bus ride.

She’s received “snotty remarks” on the bus before, but nothing compared to the brutal taunting she endured last week.

A few of the students issued apologies through the police to Klein. One of the boys’ mothers said she was “shocked and disgusted” when she learned about her son’s behaviour. “I’m embarrassed, angry and sad about the awful way he treated you. I am truly sorry,” she wrote.

Klein says she’s ready to forgive. But even as the world’s generosity and support continue to shatter expectations, last week’s trauma — an event that redefined cruelty in the minds of many — will be hard to forget.

It’s a conflicting feeling that will undoubtedly linger in this shaken community even after the news trucks pull away from Klein’s street and the limelight moves elsewhere.

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