N.C. State professor helps save woman's home

It’s a happy ending for Clara Hargrove, thanks in part to a North Carolina State University professor.

The 69-year-old Macon widow was facing tax foreclosure on her home and land, having owed more than $10,000 in property taxes.

She had been paying down the debt until last week, when she came up approximately $800 short. The house barely escaped the auction block when Warren County tax officials gave Hargrove one more week to pay off the bill.

The professor, who asked that his identity not be revealed, donated the rest of what she owed, saying that, after seeing her story on WRAL News, he could not let her lose it.

Hargrove could not be reached Thursday.

In an interview last week, she said she became overwhelmed with her finances after her husband died in 1997.

Both he and her son are buried on the land her family’s owned for more than 30 years.