RACINE - Four years ago, Racine native Pam Lamb was living in a townhouse with her aging mother and working for a local phone company.

Today, the former finance specialist is on the doorstep of losing her home to foreclosure. And that's only a fraction of what she has had to endure since 2005. In less than three years, Lamb has tumbled from a middle-class life to being jobless, destitute and no longer a homeowner.

Since January 2005, Lamb, 56, has:

-- Seen her job eliminated.

-- Failed to land work despite half a lifetime of varied work experience.

-- Used up her retirement savings. For doing that, she now owes the government approximately $4,600 in taxes, penalties and interest.

-- Tended her mother, 87, through major heart surgery and a difficult aftermath.

-- Seen her mother, Mary Selbach, descend further into dementia, complicating Lamb's full-time caretaker role.

-- Learned that she had cancer - twice.

The next blow will be the loss of her home at 2400 Gillen St. Technically, it already belongs to the mortgage holder, PHH Mortgage Corp. of Mount Laurel, N.J., although Lamb's lawyer has been able to delay her eviction.

Recently, while Lamb was still scratching around for a rent-subsidized apartment, she said, "I've worked all my life, and it's coming down to us, me, possibly living in HALO (the local homeless organization)?"

She is now facing a likely Nov. 17 date by which she must be out. She plans to move herself and her mother to a subsidized apartment in Kenosha.

Already, most of her belongings are in boxes.

Acquisition anguish

Lamb's problems started just after the turn of the millennium, when AT&T bought her former

employer, Teleport Communications Group, a local phone company in Lisle, Ill.

"It went from being a viable company to big, big trouble," said her friend and former Teleport co-worker, Sharon Bronsberg of Berwyn, Ill.

At one time, Lamb supervised about 12 employees at Teleport, including Bronsberg.

During Lamb's 10 years with the company, "She had an excellent work record," Bronsberg said. "She knows finances; she's very good at what she does."

Once, she said, the company's database was a "mess," and Lamb was asked to fix it. "She saved them lots and lots of money," Bronsberg said. "But that didn't mean anything."

When AT&T and SBC Communications entered acquisition talks, problems began at the former Teleport, Lamb and Bronsberg said.

Leading up to the 2005 merger, AT&T began slashing jobs. Lamb said the company, which AT&T had inflated from about 50 to about 200 employees, was then pruned to about 75.

During those waves of job cuts, Bronsberg said, AT&T favored people it had brought into Teleport, at the expense of those who were there before. Bronsberg lost her job. Her husband resigned. And in January, Lamb got the news: They were cutting her position and letting her go.

Lamb's only family, other than her mother, were her brother, Lon Selbach, and his wife, in Racine. Lamb, who had worked steadily since she was 18, decided to move back here and look for work.

"The only thing she could have done differently," Bronsberg said, "is not move. Because the job market is here."

No jobs, no luck

But Lamb sold her townhouse in Romeoville, Ill., and moved back to Racine. She bought her house on Gillen Street and moved back in July 2005.

The setbacks began to roll in. Just a month after they arrived here, Lamb's mother needed emergency quadruple bypass surgery. A slow recovery followed. "Because I wasn't working, I was the caregiver," Lamb said.

By March 2006 Lamb began to look for work in earnest. "I was looking for accounts payable, accounts receivable, credit and collections, administration, inventory, control, expediting … anything I've had a background in."

She was turned down again and again because she'd earned $60,000 at her last job. "They said, 'You're overqualified,'" and feared she would jump ship at the first better-paying job that came along.

Meanwhile, Lamb was steadily draining her 401(k) retirement account. By about mid-2007, it was gone. "I figured I would be working by the time that money would be gone," Lamb said.

At that point, living off her mother's $909 in monthly Social Security income and facing a $1,300 monthly mortgage payment, Lamb fell delinquent on the mortgage. "There was no option," she said.

In November, PHH Mortgage Corp. filed foreclosure papers.

Lamb's lawyer from Legal Action of Wisconsin, Gay Lorenzen, filed litigation which kept Lamb in the house longer than she could have stayed otherwise. The court case may also net monetary damages. But Lamb has to be out by Nov. 17.

Cancer

This April - more than two years after Lamb started looking for work - she took a job in a local grocery store delicatessen.

By then she had been diagnosed with cancer near her left eye. A week after starting work, she took a day off for the surgery.

However, "They didn't get it all," Lamb said. "They had to go in deeper."

The follow-up surgery required 10 days away from work - and the employer let her go, less than 30 days after she had started.

Eye cancer was followed by breast cancer and a mastectomy this summer - all without health insurance, which Lamb had decided she could not afford. "I'm in collections for that stuff," she said.

Next will come chemotherapy. "Who's going to hire me, knowing I have to have chemo?" she said. "Because I don't know how I'm going to react to it."

She'd like to move back to Illinois where Lamb thinks she'd find more jobs, but she said, "I paid a lot of money to move up here, almost $5,000. I couldn't afford to do that again. And I sure wouldn't go back without having a job."

She's applied for Supplemental Security Income and is waiting for a response. "I've paid into Social Security since I was 16 years old," she said, "and I've just got to wait."

Asked why she wanted to share her story and what she hopes to gain from it, Lamb said she mainly wants people to know that foreclosure can hit many kinds of people.

"Not only does this happen to people with kids … There are people who did have a nice life and nice income before this stuff happens."

What to do when you can't pay your mortgage

If you are having trouble keeping up with your mortgage payments or have gotten a notice from your lender asking you to contact them, it's time to take the problem very seriously.

Here are some tips from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

-- Don't ignore the problem. The further behind you become, the harder it will be to reinstate your loan and the more likely that you will lose your house.

-- Contact your lender as soon as you realize that you have a problem. They have options to help borrowers through difficult financial times.

-- Open and respond to all mail from your lender. The first notices you receive will offer good information about foreclosure prevention options. Your failure to open the mail will not be an excuse in foreclosure court.

-- Know your mortgage rights. Find your loan documents and read them so you know what your lender may do if you can't make your payments. Learn about your state's foreclosure laws by contacting the State Government Housing Office.

-- Prioritize your spending. After health care, keeping your house should be your first priority. Delay payments on credit cards and other "unsecured" debt until you have paid your mortgage.

-- Use your assets. Do you have assets - such as a second car, jewelry, a whole life insurance policy - that you can sell to help reinstate your loan? Can anyone in your household get an extra job? Even if these efforts don't markedly increase available cash, they show your lender you are willing to make sacrifices to keep your home.

-- Avoid foreclosure prevention companies. You don't need to pay fees for foreclosure prevention help - use that money to pay the mortgage instead.

-- Don't lose your house to foreclosure recovery scams. If any firm claims they can stop your foreclosure immediately if you sign a document appointing them to act on your behalf, you may well be signing over the title to your property and becoming a renter in your own home! Never sign a legal document without reading and understanding all the terms and getting professional advice from an attorney, a trusted real estate professional or a HUD-approved housing counselor.

-- In addition, the nonprofit NeighborWorks America has a foreclosure hot-line which be useful: (888) 995-4673.