Widow’s Home Entangled in Legal Thicket

Seventy-four-year-old Roxie Ann Clark, a widow with a fifth-grade education, worked for years to purchase her small gray house in South-Central Los Angeles.

“I did day work trying to keep my house paid off. By myself, just the Lord and me,” Clark said as she sat in a courthouse hallway Friday, seemingly bewildered by the legal commotion swirling around her. “It’s everything I have.”

It was the latest scene in a five-year ordeal that began when a man named Marco Garcia showed up at Clark’s doorstep and allegedly got the woman, who had fallen behind in house payments, to unwittingly sign over the deed to her home, an accusation Garcia denies.

Clark, believing that he could help her out of her predicament and that she was still the owner of the home, made monthly payments of $450 to him, she said.

Meanwhile, the deed was conveyed to another man, who took out a loan on the property and defaulted. The deed ended up in the hands of Far West Savings & Loan, which began foreclosure proceedings.

When the institution failed, the federal government stepped in as conservator, and the foreclosure proceedings moved forward.

Two weeks ago, after learning of Clark’s predicament through a social worker, Frank Hespe, an attorney for a legal center that offers free legal assistance for the elderly, got a temporary restraining order blocking the sale of the home, which had been set for Wednesday.

This week, Hespe sought a preliminary injunction that would have barred foreclosure indefinitely. The federal agency overseeing the failed thrift--the Resolution Trust Corp.--filed an objection.

But that was merely “a knee-jerk” reaction because the corporation had to respond quickly, said Christopher Kim, the corporation’s attorney. Kim went to Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday to request a 45-day stay in the case’s proceedings so the corporation could sort through the complex series of allegations and property transactions.

“Obviously, once (we) had time to think things over, we did not want to go through with the foreclosure,” Kim said. The stay will provide “the opportunity to review the evidence and gather information to find out what happened with Miss Clark.”

Judge Raymond Cardenas granted the stay and blocked until March the sale of the property.

“I feel good about it,” Clark said, standing with her attorney after the short proceeding. “I hadn’t been resting, not eating well, just thinking what’s going to happen to me if they take it.”

Hespe said he was satisfied with the judge’s decision, adding that “now that (the Resolution Trust Corp.) understands the human price their actions entail, they seem to be more willing to settle.”

But Hespe, who has filed a civil suit against Clark’s alleged defrauders, said he is still concerned.

“I have no guarantee they won’t foreclose after 45 days,” he said. “And if we haven’t worked this out, we’ll be back in front of the judge with the exact same motion.”

What happened to Clark is muddled in her memory. But she remembers that sometime in January or February of 1986, Garcia began coming to her home, weighed down by documents she did not understand.

Hespe said that around that time a notice of foreclosure had been filed against her house, in the 500 block of East 65th Street. Clark recalled that Garcia and an unidentified woman came to her home, informed her of the action, and offered to help save her home.

“I couldn’t understand why the bank had me in foreclosure,” she said. “I thought he was telling me the truth, and trying to help me.”

“He’d show me the papers,” said Clark, speaking quietly from a courthouse bench. “He’d take my hand and have me mark my name wherever he wanted me to sign it.” Then one day he showed up in the morning, she said.

“He said, ‘I can’t help you, unless you give me the deed. You’ve got to hurry because at 4 o’clock they’ll be foreclosing.’ And that was the last time I saw him.”

For the next three years, Clark said, she made monthly payments of $450 to Garcia, which she thought were mortgage payments. But five months after getting the home from Clark, Garcia sold the property to a man named Clifford Hickman, now deceased, who in turn took out a $51,000 loan on the property with Home Lenders Inc. The lending institution then handed over the deed of trust to the Far West Savings & Loan Assn., which, after Hickman defaulted on the loan, began foreclosure proceedings. The Resolution Trust Corp. took over Far West last month.

Garcia, interviewed by telephone Friday, denied the allegations, saying that Clark had sold the home to him willingly and that he arranged for her to continue living there under a lifetime lease, for which she paid $450 a month. He added that he sold the property to Hickman, who was a business partner, but continued managing the property and collecting Clark’s payments. Hickman died, he said, about three years ago.

Garcia, 26, said he learned of Clark’s plight through a friend and paid off her overdue mortgage payments before purchasing her home.

Garcia said Clark’s rent money was used to pay off Hickman’s loan--taken out primarily to pay off other loans against the house and to make repairs. But she stopped paying her rent about 1 1/2 years ago, he said. “I wasn’t going to keep paying this lady’s rent, so the property went into default. If she’d paid her rent, this never would have happened.”