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MERCED — Three weeks ago, a retired telephone company worker named Ethelda Lopez watched as her dream retirement home was auctioned on the lawn outside the county courthouse in downtown Merced.
“When I heard my address, it was so disheartening,” she said. For six months, she had made hundreds of calls to her mortgage company, federal officials, local political leaders — begging them all for lower payments or more time. No one paid heed.
Wracked with depression and anxiety, she was too ashamed to tell her friends that she was losing her stucco-and-stone ranch home in the Atwater countryside.
“I couldn’t stop crying myself to sleep,” said Lopez, 51.
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