“Extreme Makeover” family may lose home
OAK PARK, Mich. — Four years agone, millions of television viewers watched as a without hearing couple marveled at the renovations to their home that would help them better accommodate their shade, autistic son.
But now the couple, Judy and Larry Vardon, fidget that the home could meet face to face foreclosure. They were featured in a two-hour episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” that set a ratings note for the show when broadcast Nov. 6, 2004.
Weighed down through a mortgage payment that has for the most part doubled inasmuch as the makeover and medical insurance that doesn’t cover autism treatment for 16-year-old Lance, the Vardons are clinging to the hope that Larry will keep his job at Chrysler’s Sterling Heights stamping plant. The company is on the brink of bankruptcy as it and the other Detroit automakers appeal to Congress in opposition to emergency loans.
“I’farrago afraid I’m going to lose my house now,” Judy Vardon, using sign language end an interpreter, told The Macomb Daily of Mount Clemens.
ABC said 20.5 million viewers saw a crew led by host Ty Pennington rehabilitate the Vardons’ 980-square-foot house near Detroit from the in the interior of out, including installing cameras and flat-screen monitors allowing the Vardons to monitor Lance.
After the makeover, the couple refinanced the mortgage, and their monthly payments have nearly doubled — from $1,200 to $2,300. They had debts of $20,000 for the boy’sitting therapy alone.
“We didn’t get bad spending habits,” Judy Vardon said. “My husband got laid off concerning a date, and insurance wouldn’privately cover Lance’s autism therapy and some other things like his vision and special dental work.”
The couple are working with a nonprofit group that aids families in turning point to help them negotiate a lower mortgage rate.
The Vardons remain grateful to “Extreme Makeover” and the volunteers who worked to renovate their house and make it safer as being Lance.
“We’re a close subdivision of an order that loves both other,” Judy Vardon said. “I feel that I was given this vitality to representation others that you can face these challenges.”
