Heading toward Christmas of 2006, Tim Knopf knew he was in trouble on the mortgage he was paying to a long-distance lender.
He had just refinanced his Palmetto home for $279,000, setting himself up with a monthly payment that would start out tough before getting tougher.
Then he lost his job.
That started a yearlong marathon effort to avoid foreclosure by convincing the lender, Option One of Irvine, Calif., to take a loss on the loan it had made to him.