The number of notices is up 22 percent this year.

AUBURN – David Trafford tugged a khaki-colored jacket over his brass badge and black holster and climbed out of his tan sedan.

He clutched a metal clipboard, scanning the yard for dogs.

The Lewiston street was filled with newer homes – mostly saltboxes and raised ranches.

Standing on the concrete stoop, he rapped hard on the front door.

A teenager opened it, dressed in baggy jeans, a bandanna tied around his head.

A moment later, a woman appeared. She stepped outside, closing the door behind her.

Trafford opened the metal clipboard revealing a thick wad of papers. He handed them to her.

She thanked him, then disappeared back in the house.

Widespread foreclosures

A sergeant with the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department, Trafford makes house calls, serving foreclosure notices to homeowners behind on their payments.

These days, he’s busier than ever.

Thumbing through the stack of papers in his lap, Trafford said his job takes him to all corners of the Twin Cities. He visits every type of residence, including tenement buildings, new colonials and mansions. On this day, he knocked on doors of middle-class homeowners in Lewiston’s suburbs.

Many of the front lawns he navigated were decorated with tilting “For Sale” signs, buried in snowbanks or spattered with mud.

Half the doors opened. Most occupants weren’t surprised to see him, accepting his legal documents with friendly resignation. Occasionally, they vent or refuse to take the offered paperwork, he said.

‘Very depressing’

Behind every door, there’s a story.

One woman greeted the deputy recently with a 2-foot python wrapped around the wrist of her extended hand.

As Trafford explained the reason for his visit, the snake, named Cleo, slowly uncoiled from the woman’s arm, stretching out to sniff the new guest.

Linda Sherwood told him she never imagined she’d be fighting to keep her Auburn home.

Soon after she and her husband divorced, Sherwood got sick. Unable to work, she fell behind on bills, including the mortgage.

Now, with five children to feed, clothe, house and get to school, she is exploring all of her options, each bleaker than the next.

“We’re surviving on nothing but the generosity of friends and heating assistance over the winter and knowing how to stretch a dollar,” she said in an interview at her home this week.

Until her chronic ailment struck, Sherwood buzzed with energy.

Skilled in many areas, she always found work. She cleaned homes, painted and Sheetrocked as a self-employed “professional organizer.”

She worked as a computer technician for a company that provided support services to adults and children with mental health issues. She could take a computer apart and rebuild it. That company went bankrupt last fall.

“I was always a wicked hard worker,” she said.

Active in community affairs, she volunteered her time on boards and even launched with a friend a women’s business networking group as well as a nonprofit shop that outfitted women re-entering the work force.

Her modest income now from military benefits, state aid and child support don’t cover the family’s expenses. She works small jobs when she can, but it’s not enough.

“Things have gotten worse and worse and worse,” she said.

A local oil company is suing her for payment for the oil she bought at the end of last year.

“If I had the money, I’d pay it,” she said.

She took pride in paying all of her bills on time and sometimes prepaying, she said. That was when she was working.

Now she lets the answering machine screen her calls, avoiding creditors.

“It’s very depressing,” she said.

Kids rally in hard times

Five months late on her mortgage payments, Sherwood is due in court in June, according to the papers Trafford served.

Some people have suggested she sell her home.

But, even if she could find a buyer in this depressed real estate market, she’d have to rent a home big enough to house her five children. That likely would cost more than her monthly mortgage payment, she said.

She can’t refinance without a full-time job. Even her banker friends say, “Sorry Linda, we can’t help you.”

She tries not to dwell on her woes. She prefers to focus on the kids, four boys and a girl. They’ve rallied in these tough times, she said.

The older kids, teenagers in high school, are seeking jobs. They also look after her health and remind her of her financial limits when she’s tempted to splurge on something for them at the store.

The adversity has a silver lining, she said. The family is closer than ever and her kids have a new appreciation for more important things in life than the latest video game or trendy fashions.

Her kids don’t come home from school to expensive toys. They walk through the door eager to play with tiny black kittens navigating the floor or they ask to hold Cleo the snake.

“I’m just blessed to have great kids who seem to understand we work as a team,” she said.

Friends leave bags of expensive clothes on the back deck.

“Nobody really knows how poor we are,’ she said.

Even in financial straits, she often entertains groups of kids at her home, friends and athletic teammates of her children. She cooks most meals from scratch, cracking eggs from the live chickens she keeps.

She wishes there was a support group for people caught in foreclosure. They could brainstorm ideas and share resources, she said.

A bad trend

Meanwhile, Trafford said the number of civil summonses and complaints keeps growing; most of those are foreclosures.

His office served more than 800 in the first four months of this year, compared to 658 during the same period last year. That’s a 22 percent increase, Trafford said.

“It seems to be happening more and more these days,” he said. “People are avoiding us. They just don’t want to see the sheriff because they know it’s not good news.”

He’s required by law to make three attempts. If nobody answers the door, he’ll slip a business card between it and the jamb.

After a third time, he fills out an affidavit and sends it to the law firm hired by the bank. A judge must give the firm the OK to post the papers on the homeowner’s door.

After that, it’s out of Trafford’s hands. The summons gives the homeowner 20 days to respond.

The trend is bad for the banks and bad for the homeowners. Only the county profits from the spike in foreclosures. They charge for every summons served.

Trafford is sympathetic. He knows how some people become victims of circumstance.

Some of the doors he’s knocked on belong to people who greet him by name. It may be an old friend from high school or somebody who rode the bus with him.

One time, while serving eviction papers, a policeman opened the door. He knew the man.

Trafford had been there before, delivering papers to the officer’s wife. She had never told her husband about the foreclosure proceedings.

“Once he found out about it he took the appropriate steps,” Trafford said. “I’m pretty sure they still live in that home today.”