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It also spoke to his desire to give back to the community; a lesson in civic responsibility he learned from his political idol, Robert F. Kennedy.

"He gave back even though he didn't have to," Pearce said of Kennedy. A large black-and-white photo of RFK hangs in Pearce's office in downtown Raleigh.

At Self-Help, Pearce worked to get abandoned and boarded-up buildings turned into stores and offices, to help high-risk home buyers obtain loans and to revive depressed neighborhoods.

"He has remarkable skills," says Martin Eakes, the chief executive of Self-Help. "He did jobs all across the map. He has a perspective that not many people have, because he has seen the mortgage industry from so many different angles."

One of Pearce's favorite projects was redeveloping homes in the Walltown community in Durham. The plan included renovating the old homes and then selling them at moderate prices. He gauged his success by the number children he saw riding bicycles in the neighborhood.

"You know that when you see kids riding their bikes, it's really a safe neighborhood," Pearce says.

The troubleshooter

But Pearce started to notice that lenders were going back into those neighborhoods and getting people to cash out their equity by refinancing. Many people were charged excessive fees, in what became known as predatory lending.

Self-Help officials realized that they needed a separate organization to advocate for federal laws and guidelines to fight against predatory lending and other hurtful practices. They established the Center for Responsible Lending, which lobbied to create the state's first predatory lending law. Eventually Pearce was named president of the organization and continued to work for fair lending.

It was while heading the Center for Responsible Lending that Pearce noticed lenders were offering low-income and high-risk buyers -- known as the subprime market -- bigger and more-expensive loans. He saw people buying more house than they could afford, with adjustable-rate loans. He says he realized several years ago that the country and the state were heading for a foreclosure problem.

"I knew the music was going to stop, and when it happened, it was going to be devastating -- a lot of foreclosures and mortgage fraud," Pearce says.

But he admits that he didn't realize how badly it would affect the overall economy.

Last year in North Carolina, foreclosure filings rose 9.4 percent to 49,754. The banking commissioner estimates that the numbers will increase 10 percent to 20 percent in 2008.

Today, Pearce spends most of his day working on projects to help stop foreclosures.

He travels the country meeting with the top managers of the major subprime lenders, including Countrywide, Wells Fargo, Chase and HSBC. His goal is to find ways for lenders to help people who are having trouble paying high-interest mortgages.

The traveling can be hard on the family man who likes to be home evenings for dinner with his wife and three young children.

His wife, Melissa, a professor at UNC-CH, said he makes a point of spending his free time with his children. But once they are in bed, he is working on his computer. He even helps friends who are having problems with their mortgages.

Pearce rarely gets to see the homeowners he fights for. There are no opportunities to drop shiny new keys into the hands of a first-time home buyer.

But he does occasionally drive through the Walltown neighborhood, which is just few blocks from his home in Trinity Park. He takes comfort in seeing that the neighborhood has continued to thrive -- recently celebrating its 100th new home.

"I still look for kids riding their bicycles," he says.

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