She went back to school while working as a school bus driver to become a paralegal and worked her way up to an investigator's job at the Miami-Dade public defender's office.

She survived a stroke.

She kept going after her first -- and second -- husbands walked away from her.

Despite all of her triumphs, Wilamae Richardson fell behind on her mortgage payments last year and was on the verge of becoming another foreclosure statistic.

Then she got the kind of offer for help many other homeowners in her position can only wish for: Her mortgage holder called and offered to look over her expenses and sculpt her budget. It offered a payment plan to make up the missing payments -- with no penalty. Had she needed it, it might have added the unpaid sum to the end of the mortgage and wiped the slate clean.

That's because Habitat for Humanity was holding Richardson's mortgage.

``They would always call me and say, `Is there anything I can do to help?' '' said Richardson, 49. ``I said, `Just bear with me.' ''

And they did. ``We're not interested in taking the homes away,'' said Michelle Marcos, a spokeswoman for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Miami. The nonprofit organization provides low-income families with new homes if they are willing to put in some of the physical labor needed to build them.

Habitat's local foreclosure rate is less than 1 percent, compared to nearly one in four homeowners in the area who are either in foreclosure or behind on payments. Over the years, volunteers and homeowners have built more than 700 homes in Miami-Dade. Two Habitat chapters have built more than 50 homes in the Florida Keys. Nationally, the organization's foreclosure rate is less than 2 percent, spokeswoman Jolanda Logan said.

To qualify, a family of four can earn no more than $53,900. Richardson was making $16,000 a year when she signed the mortgage in 1994.

Potential homeowners must attend financial education classes before closing and eliminate much of their debt. The organization helps them save for their down payments by matching the dollars they save in the months until closing.

``We want them to make sure they are prepared for the rigors of homeownership,'' Marcos said.

Habitat homeowners aren't charged interest, and payments are set at 30 percent of the family income -- whatever it is -- at the time the home is built ``so they can have enough for groceries left over,'' Marcos said.

So Richardson didn't get a loan she couldn't understand or buy way more house than she could afford. Even when Habitat owners' income rises, the size of their mortgage payments never change.

According to the U.S. Census, about 57 percent of Miami-Dade renters and nearly 50 percent statewide spent more than a third of their income on rent last year. And 40 percent of Floridians with mortgages devoted at least a third of their income to house payments. Government loan modifications for people struggling with these figures are trying to reduce payments to 31 percent of gross income.

When her ends stopped meeting last year, Habitat didn't wait for Richardson to fall more than a month behind to reach out to her. Richardson said she prayed over the idea of accepting an extension of her loan and other offers of assistance from Habitat. She and her daughters, determined to keep their four-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Goulds, decided they had to help themselves instead.

``What I did was, I started cooking,'' Richardson said. ``Beans and rice, potato salad, barbecue chicken and ribs. I would type up fliers and pass them out everywhere. We delivered. We were making $500 to $600 a Saturday and we did it for three Saturdays. I couldn't make dishes fast enough.''

Soon, she was caught up on her payments. Things were going fine until this summer. Richardson, who also provides a home for her five grandchildren and her son, in addition to her two daughters, fell behind on her payments again. ``I sold dinners again,'' she said.

In August, she paid off her 15-year mortgage.

``There were times I cried,'' Richardson said, ``but God said he would never leave me. He would never forsake me. Those scriptures in the Bible, I had to put them to work.''

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