An overflow crowd piled into the Merced Civic Center, spilling out of the main auditorium, into the halls and down the stairs.
Some brought babies, others elderly parents. Everyone brought their paperwork — the sum of their financial lives and wreckage of their American Dream.
A foreclosure prevention fair on a brilliant Saturday afternoon was the place of choice for more than 200 people in Merced, a city of 65,000 best known as the gateway to Yosemite National Park.
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