Stranger Buys Back Home For Weeping Victim Of Foreclosure
Posted October 27, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
While everyone in Canada has felt at least some small rumblings from the U.S. market meltdowns, nothing here seems quite as bad as in the U.S., where the credit crunch and the subprime mortgage mess has lead to people losing their homes.
That terrible day came on the weekend for Tracy Orr, a Dallas area mother, who couldn’t make the payments on her residence and lost the place where her kids grew up.
Determined to see her misfortune through to the end, Orr went to the auction house where what was a commodity to be bought and sold to others – and a lifetime of memories for her – was going on the block.
“I got behind, and I just couldn’t pull out,” she explains. “The next thing I know I was moving outta my home … I went, just to get some closure, see what was gonna happen with my home.”
It was the bleakest day of her life and she sat quietly sobbing in the corner as the house came up for bids. And that’s when Orr’s tragedy turned into an amazing triumph of generosity she had no reason to ever expect.
As the bidding grew in intensity, one woman in the crowd noticed Orr’s obvious pain and asked her why she was so emotional. Marilyn Mock, an investment adviser, was touched by her tale of loss and decided to do something about it. She’d originally come just to guide her son through the purchase of a separate home he wanted to buy.
But she decided to join the fray to get Orr’s home and added in her own bids. “I had been on the floor for maybe 30 seconds and it came up for bid,” she recalls. “She had just finished telling me … She said that was her home and then I just decided to get up and bid on it.”
Despite the fact the potential buyers couldn’t even see a picture of the place – it wasn’t published in the auction guide – the value quickly escalated to $30,000. When the gavel came down, Mock had her prize.
And then this complete stranger stunned Orr by paying the bill and handing the keys back to her. The displaced woman was speechless and the tears – this time of joy – flowed again.
“I’m still in shock,” she admits of the unbelievably generous nature of the stranger. “Seems like a dream and I’m gonna wake up here in the next couple days. And I don’t know, I’m still in shock.”
Mock just felt for the woman and agrees that in hard times, everyone occasionally needs a helping hand. “People need to help each other and that’s all there is to it,” the Good Samaritan concludes.
Orr will be forever in a new kind of debt over the experience. “She knows how much she has blessed my life,” she cries. “Nobody’s ever done anything like that for me before and I hope that I can repay the favour.”
