VIDEO: Couple finds squatter living in foreclosed home

Getting sick can cost you your home. And sometimes someone else moves in, for free.

"It's a little frustrating," said Steffi Dudrey, 32, of Cedar Rapids.

Dudrey was frustrated, not frightened, July 4 when she encountered a man living in the house she and her husband own in the 100 block of 17th Street NW.

Dudrey and her husband, Brian Dudrey, had lived there since November 2006 but gave up the home to foreclosure in March. They wanted to keep it clean for its sheriff's sale, set now for Tuesday.

Diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in January 2008, Dudrey had to take a medical leave from her job in client service for LimoLink, the Marion firm that manages online reservations for limousine services, Without her income, the couple couldn't afford their mortgage, she said.

A quick stop to check on the house July 2 turned up evidence someone had been squatting there. "Things were trashed," Dudrey said.

Police who were called to search the house found a makeshift bed of carpet backing. Carpet had been placed under a basement window where the squatter had entered the home.

Two days later, Steffi Dudrey's mother-in-law called. She had noticed a window shade had been moved and the porch door locked from the inside. Dudrey hurried over to find a thin, long-haired man walking down the alley.

"I just put two and two together," she said. "It had to be somebody thin to fit through the basement window."

Dudrey confronted the man, who, she said, admitted staying in her former home.

"He proceeded to tell me that he thought the house was foreclosed and that no one was living there, so he could just stay there," she said.

Turning down the man's offer of $10 to forget the whole thing, Dudrey called police, They arrested the man, Everett R. Lindsay, 31.

Lindsay listed no address when he was booked in to the Linn County Jail on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon - for a set of brass knuckles he'd been carrying - and third-degree burglary. Lindsay was in jail in lieu of $10,000 cash bail.

It was clear that someone had settled in. Dudrey found cigarettes, liquor bottles and pornographic magazines near his bed, and trash bags that had been used as a toilet.

Cedar Rapids police haven't handled many similar calls, either in foreclosed homes or those in flooded neighborhoods, department spokeswoman Sgt. Cristy Hamblin said,

Still, Dudrey wants absentee owners to beware. She and her husband hope to undo the damage to the home before next week's auction.

After eight months of chemotherapy, Dudrey has gone nearly a year without further symptoms. She's due for a follow-up exam this month.