Eviction Nightmare Looms for Haunted Trail Family on Dugan Ave.: Bank Sale

Kris Golojuch's nightmare continues.  The Dugan Avenue home his family has occupied since 1959—site of a popular Halloween Haunted Trail for 21 years—faces a trustee sale Monday.

If the three-bedroom, two-bath house is sold at auction, he’ll be evicted along with his wife, Maria, 5-year-old daughter, Kristiana Marie, and baby Abigail Morrigan, he said.

“It’s tough sleeping at night,” said Golojuch (pronounced Go-LOW-you). “You don’t know what you’re going to wake up to.”

Golojuch, 31, bought the home from his family trust in 2008, but $17,000 in medical bills connected to his first daughter’s birth—when his wife had “second-tier” benefits at Ralphs—made him fall behind on mortgage payments.

Abigail was born Jan. 21—almost four weeks early—and spent her first week in a neonatal intensive care unit, but “she is doing great now,” he said.

Now US Bank, his lender, insists that he pay $75,000 to keep the home—even though Golojuch insists he can make monthly payments of $2,000. (His wife now works for the University of Phoenix, and he has a sideline business doing graphic and web design, and model building.)

US Bank representatives, he says, once told him he could qualify for a federal HAMP loan, but later reneged when they said he failed to provide all paperwork.

“They got us all excited,” he said. “They looked like they were working with us”—sending paperwork that would reduce their mortgage to 75 percent of their home’s value.  “We did exactly what they told us to do.”

But since “one single piece of paper” was missing—even after months of back-and-forth—US Bank is moving toward an auction or eviction, Golojuch said.

Even though US Bank has a regional office in Kearny Mesa, he says he’s been forced to deal by phone with staff of the main office in Owensboro, KY—but never someone in authority.

“I’ve tried” to talk to a supervisor, he said in an interview outside his home in north La Mesa. “It’s almost begging, going around in circles.”

On Tuesday, he says, he spent three hours on the phone, “and they refuse to admit they got all the documents needed to process. They claim that one single document missing is what gummed it all up. Looking for a La Mesa miracle!”

He said via email later Tuesday: “Lawyer suggested it would [cost] $75,000 to bring account completely current and back on track of original loan without any modifications being applied. That included fees galore. A Chapter 13 [bankruptcy] would have to be started Thursday with an upfront fee of $3,700 and monthly payments would start in April ($1,340 to trustee, then $2,291 going to mortgage, then all other normal bills).”

The family has cut out all frills—no cable TV, no landline phone.  They have a Verizon cell phone account.

The 5-year-old is worried about her parents—and fears losing to “her Disneyland,” which includes a Pirate ship play structure in the front yard (part of the Haunted Trail that attracts thousands every year).

Golojuch says the starting price of an auction set Monday is $367,000—and if nobody buys the 1,032-square-foot house, eviction might not be for months.

“If someone buys it, that could be a different story,” leading to the sale or storage of thousands of dollars worth of items for his Haunted Trail and Merry Scary Christmas events.

“Do I really want to put it in storage or have a big garage sale?” he asked. “It would be the hardest thing I ever had to do.”

He said he and his neighbors have seen people “scouting the place,” driving slowly by his home at 5540 Dugan in expensive cars. “They are definitely flippers”—or home speculators.

Golojuch dresses up as a pirate for his 3- or 4-night Haunted Trail, and hopes to again—perhaps using his Halloween props as a fundraiser for the PTA at Murray Manor Elementary School, where Kristiana is in kindergarten.

But without a plan to pay the $75,000 “reinstatement fee,” he thinks he may have to move his family to an apartment or stay with friends.

In  email Tuesday morning, he wrote: “Because they [the bank] are claiming they did not receive absolute most current pay stubs, they no longer want to stall auction on … March 12th. Don’t know what we are gonna do. Seems like I do everything they ask of me, and they always find something wrong.”