Luck and life

So I'm feeling pretty good today. One of my wife's best friends, who lives down the street, just had her house saved from foreclosure, and I was heavily responsible. Our friend had been dealing with it for 14 months, and was actually expecting to have a sale date from the foreclosure proceedings any day now.

Well, I happened to catch about a minute of a news story about a workshop in which Wells Fargo had mortgage guys empowered to change loan terms to help people. The news said it was going for one more day (only 2 days total) and they would take walk-ins, and that further info could be found on the news channel's website. There was no real publicity for the event, and apparently few people knew about it.

I immediately told my wife to get in touch with our friend and make sure she knew about this. The website didn't have any info, though. Still, my wife called her and left a message, telling her to look into it.

It bugged me though, so I googled something like "Wells Fargo loan modification mortgage help Portland, OR" and finally found a pdf file from Wells Fargo that described the event. I also found an online news story from the Portland Tribune, which had some testimonials by people who had their houses saved. I sent both links to my wife for her to forward.

Then, I kept pestering my wife, who kept trying to get in touch with her friend.

Anyway, she had been out of town the evening before, and hadn't really checked her messages, so she didn't get the message late. Finally, she got the message in the early afternoon. Still, she was really skeptical, and thought it was just some kind of informational session--though I sent the newsstory specifically so she could see that people were actually on the ground changing mortgages. She realized she needed to go, confirmed they still were taking walk-ins, and dropped off her son at our house while she went.

She showed up that evening with a bottle of champagne and lots of tears. She had gotten her loan modification.

It's weird, how accidental it all was too. I was watching a K-State basketball game, and normally wouldn't even turn the channel, let alone to turn to the local news. But, we were expecting a snow storm to move in the following day, so I flipped over briefly to get the forecast, and it just happened to be the channel reporting on the workshop. It was such a chance thing.

Anyway, it felt really good to have played a part in her getting her house saved from foreclosure.