The Audacity of Dopes

From the Washington News Tribune: What you learn when big money goes away.

As a rookie broker at a mom-and-pop mortgage company in Federal Way, Rob Collins had a killer month writing loans in the frothy, frenzied 2005 housing market.

He made $37,000. So he took $5,000 in cash and his fiancée, Heidi, to Bellevue Square.

“I told her, ‘We’re not leaving here until we spend it all,’” Rob recalled this week.

They spent it all right. Heidi bought a pair of designer Richmond jeans, diamond stud earrings, and some odds and ends to supplement her wardrobe. Rob, always impeccably dressed, bought clothes too, including an Italian leather jacket.

Over the following 18 plentiful months, Rob bought a used BMW M3 high-performance sports car, upgraded to a better mortgage company, bought a Hilltop house in Tacoma with Heidi, then married her.

He thought life couldn’t get much better than that.

It didn’t.

Last June, Rob, 29, lost his job writing mortgages for U.S. Bank because he couldn’t write enough approved loans to reach the $1 million minimum his bosses set for him. He sold the M3 immediately and hasn’t owned a car since. He and Heidi, 26, have fallen four months behind paying Countrywide, which owns the loan on their home. Countrywide calls every day asking for its money.

By chance, on a trip to Starbucks in Federal Way last month, I found Collins sweeping the floor before his turn taking orders at the drive-through window. He rides the bus to and from work.

“Starbucks is a great place to work,” Rob said. “I make $8.65 an hour. But I’m up for a raise here shortly.”

And Heidi? She just took a third job. Rob calls the job “swimsuit model.” The wisp of a woman walks the edge of the boxing ring at the Tulalip Casino Resort in Marysville between rounds holding up a placard with the number of the next round.

How are you doing with all this? I asked her.

“Not well,” Heidi said. She choked up. She doesn’t like to talk about it much. The mental and emotional strain, at times, becomes unbearable.

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