Before the real estate bust, Rob Paxton and Susan Schneider might have met at a networking event or through their home-buyer clients. Instead, they first crossed paths at a day shelter for the homeless in Falls Church.
Schneider, once a mortgage broker with plenty of disposable income, arrived one cold winter morning with her possessions in tow, looking for a hot meal.
In the kitchen, Paxton stirred a bubbling pot on the stove. Paxton once pulled in more than $200,000 a year in Northern Virginia, but he had taken the part-time job as the shelter's director when his commissions dwindled to almost nothing.
Paxton, 55, noticed Schneider right away. Wearing a knit cap and a slightly dazed expression, Schneider was one of the few female faces in a sea of mostly Latino men awaiting the noon meal. He said hello, and soon they'd swapped stories.
"We have a lot of common ground," Paxton says. "Same business: trying to get people into homes."
Now it is Schneider who needs a home. And over the last six weeks, Paxton has tried to help her - shepherding to her to different shelters to find a open bed, giving her food and calmly taking her calls when her perilous situation frays her emotions past the breaking point.
Although Schneider, 43, is grateful for the help, their alliance is shaky at times. She doesn't hide her bitterness that the man trying to help her - a colleague, really - still has his charming gray-and-white Colonial in Fairfax Station, while she lost it all.
"Don't get me wrong, Rob is a nice guy," she says. "But you really have to live it to know what it's like."
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