BLACKSBURG - Worry and exhaustion are the life experiences that show on Lisa Turner's face. The 32-year-old mother of three has aged in the weeks since water was shut off to her Echols Mobile Home Park trailer where she lived with her children and boyfriend, close to the rental trailers occupied by her mother, Wanda Hall, and father, Eldred Hall.

The worry and exhaustion are apparent, but the grief hasn't yet creased the lines in her face. She's had no time to mourn. "My mama died Friday, the day I was moving out," Turner said Wednesday as she was leaving the park. "My dad's moving out now."

Residents of the mobile home park, owned by Shirley Echols, have been scrambling to find affordable housing since their water was disconnected Aug. 16. Echols has a pending contract with Blacksburg developer Jeanne Stosser to buy the property and build clustered single-family homes on the 9.9-acre Givens Lane tract. The trailer park community has known since last year that Echols planned to sell. Many moved prior to the February deadline Echols first set, but others remained and the landlord allowed them to stay on a month-to-month basis.

But Echols eventually decided to have the water cut off and moving became a matter of urgency. Many, if not most, of the trailer park's residents have low incomes and said in the week leading up to the cutoff that they were having difficulty finding other places they could afford. Few had money to move their trailers, and even if they did, most of the trailers are too old to be allowed in other parks.

A.D. Olinger, 79, considers himself lucky because he already has a second trailer on Whipple Drive. He moved to Echols' park because the trailer there was nicer. It had a heat pump and new furniture. Now, he's going back to where he started.

Living at Echols' park, he said, "was fair, I guess. About like any old trailer court. I never had no trouble here. But everybody's got to have some place to live, don't they?"

Wanda Gail Smith, 37, was packing nonperishable food items Wednesday as friends helped with her move to a house she will rent for $300 per month on Glade Road. She paid $200 for the trailer at Echols' park, but moving out of town to the countryside, she said, is "where I belong anyways."

"I'm just glad to get out of here really," Smith groaned about Echols. "Some of these people don't have nowhere to go, but he don't really care."

Smith - clearly angry at Echols and at the condition of the mobile home park, which is littered with broken furniture, appliances and household items residents abandoned while moving - said she and her two sons, ages 13 and 15, have been carrying water to flush toilets in their trailer and have been showering at friends' homes nearby.

"I had to walk with them because my youngest son doesn't like to ask," Smith said, noting that she didn't pay her August rent because of the water cutoff.

"Mr. Echols has always treated me OK, but, to me, he doesn't care about all the stress and everything," she added. "I don't think he thinks about it. I really don't."

Smith said she believed recent stress was the reason her neighbor, 50-year-old Wanda Hall, suffered a fatal heart attack Aug. 27.

"I think that poor woman worried herself to death. I talked to her the day she died. She didn't tell me she was feeling bad, but she did look bad."

Echols said Wednesday the only remaining tenant who paid rent in August was Mike Dalton. Dalton leases a lot for the trailer he and his wife own.

"I reduced it because of the water being off," Echols explained, saying that Dalton and a few other residents are still living on his property even though everyone was supposed to be gone Aug. 31. "I'm just giving them time. I'm not collecting any more rent. I want them out as soon as I can."

Echols, who is 68, has said he is too old to continue operating the park his family opened in 1964. His fatherstarted the business and when he died in 1990, Shirley Echols and his brother, Gale, took over. After Gale Echols died in 1995, Shirley Echols assumed sole responsibility as landlord.

The responsibility is something he won't miss.

Vandalism, rowdiness he attributes to drinking and a general lack of consideration on the part of some tenants has "been really something," he said.

"Litter. They don't care what their place looks like. I have to stay on them all the time about trash," Echols said.

Echols has had several trailers on his property torn down at a cost of $400 apiece. He is paying someone to move six this week. He has covered windows in some trailers with plywood but vandals have smashed windows in others.

Asked if he will be glad to be rid of the mobile home park, he offered a one-word answer:

"Absolutely!"

Dalton, who recently landed a full-time job as a construction foreman with Marshall Erdman & Associates after months of doing odd jobs, borrowed money from a bank to pay for moving his 1983-model mobile home but says he's "having a real pain in the derriere trying to find a place to put it."

He checked with other mobile home parks in the area but found the rules for keeping pets (he and his wife have two dogs and a cat) and for rental compliance unsuitable.

"One wanted to come in at random and inspect the trailer I own," he said. "That didn't set too well with me. Plus, I don't think it's legal."

Dalton said he could move out of Montgomery County, but his wife wouldn't be able to drive to and from her housekeeping job at Virginia Tech because she has night blindness. He could rent a house but he would lose money on the trailer he already owns. So far, he has had one $300 offer for the home, he said.

"People say, 'Just leave your trailer.' What are we supposed to do? Give up a job? Give up a pet? We're just up the creek without a paddle."

For Lisa Turner and her family, help arrived three weeks ago in the form of Chad Long, a former Christiansburg man who now lives near High Point, N.C. After reading about her situation and the plight of the Echols Mobile Home Park residents in a Roanoke Times' online newspaper story, he and his wife, Leslie, felt called to help.

Long, who lived in several trailer parks as a child, said he hit a few bumps in the road after graduating from Blacksburg High School in 1993 and going on to college. He got into some trouble that landed him in jail for nearly a year, but upon his release, he turned his life over to Jesus.

"Since that day - Oct. 19, 1999 - my life has been one blessing after another," he said, explaining that he moved to North Carolina, married, opened a successful Nextel franchise and welcomed his first child into the world.

After reading about Turner, Long said he and his wife prayed and came to the realization that they should assist Turner's family.

"God put it on our hearts to try to help them," he said. "I could relate to what they're going through. They need a break in life, I think. Sometimes people are beat down and just need a break."

Long met with Turner and is now planning to buy a used mobile home for her in Blacksburg's Clayton Estates. Until that happens, she and her family are living in Lake Terrace Motel and Echols is letting the family store their belongings at his trailer park.

Her mother's unexpected death prompted her to turn to Long for more help.

"She asked me to do the funeral. I'm not a pastor or anything," he said. Still, he traveled from North Carolina Monday to preside over the burial service.

"Doing the funeral was the best reward I've ever had in my life," he said. "God really revealed to me what my purpose was. Nine people were saved."

But Long said he doesn't believe Turner has had time to grieve over her mother's death because of the exigency of finding living arrangements. Because she had no water, she could not keep her children - one just an infant - at the trailer near her parents.

"Grieving has to be put on standby. I think it's probably overshadowed by her current problems."