She's a 911 operator living in Kearns, one of scores of everyday folk who have become casualties of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The impacts include devastated retirement accounts, pay cuts, job losses and trouble making the monthly mortgage payment.

The crisis, which has caused the stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average to lose 5,585 points, or 39.4 percent, since Oct. 9, 2007, has affected Arnold and many others in ways they would never have dreamed of before.

For Arnold, it all started with a letter from her bank informing her that it was effectively cutting her off from her home equity line of credit. Many banks, reeling from losses, are making it more difficult for individuals and businesses to get and keep credit lines and loans.

When she took out the credit line last year, the bank appraised her home at $199,000. She used the line to pay off a second mortgage and some bills.

But a couple of months ago, she said she received a notice from her bank notifying her that her home's value was now only $157,000.

For Arnold, who says she already has been hurt by higher food, gasoline and utility costs, the timing could not be worse. She had been counting on that credit line to get her through tough times.

"It's getting really tight for me," she said. "I'm hoping now to get overtime when I can because I'm almost to the point where I'm afraid I'll be paying minimums on small credit card balances. I've always paid more than the minimum each month."

People who provide service for low- to moderate-income families are seeing plenty of Utahns affected by the trickle-down effect of the housing and financial crisis, said Linda Hilton, community outreach coordinator for Crossroads Urban Center, a low-income service and advocacy organization in Salt Lake City.

"People aren't building as many houses anymore, so painters, carpenters and laborers are suffering. A lot of people are spending less, so workers in retail or restaurants are getting their hours cut - anybody who is waitressing, for example, has less money coming in," she said. "It trickles all the way down. People aren't traveling as much. There are more empty hotel rooms. So people who clean the rooms are getting less work."

There are struggling companies who are trying not to lay people off, so they are cutting employee hours.

All this at a time of higher prices for food, gasoline, utility and rents.

"Then there's the people who earn only commissions - they are really in a bad spot," she said.

Carol Stillman, a 64-year-old Murray home loan officer, is one of those people.

"I'm getting by, but I'm worried," Stillman said. To cope, she says she has cut back on or cut out discretionary purchases, from restaurant meals to vacations.

"I might not ever get to retire," she says. "But once I get my house paid off and I have Social Security, I may be able to get by on just that."

Preston Cochrane, president of credit-counseling business AAA Fair Credit Foundation in Salt Lake City, said an increasing number of people are facing the double-whammy of watching the value of their retirement accounts plummet as they struggle to make ends meet on a day-to-day basis. And it's not only low- to moderate-income families, he said.

"We've seen people who make $200,000 a year call and say that they are struggling to make housing payments and other debt obligations," he said.

Cochrane said much of the problem centers on the easy money and exotic loans of the past several years - the very problem that led to the financial crisis in the first place. Now, with credit tightening, people are watching their mortgage payments jump and are struggling to find a way out the situation.

Some can't sell their homes for enough money to cover their mortgage because home prices have dropped and there aren't enough buyers. In other cases, banks won't allow people to refinance out of the bad loans and into fixed-rate loans they can afford because lending standards are so much tighter.

Also feeling the pain are retirees and near retirees with retirement plans tied up in stocks. One of those is Robert Nesbitt, a 61-year-old retiree in West Jordan, who was forced to retire earlier than anticipated because of long-term health problems.

Like many people, he faithfully added to his 401(k) over the years - two decades to be exactly - and figured that would lead to a comfortable retirement.

"In hindsight, I probably should have converted the 401(k) to an annuity when I retired, but I thought it would continue to grow until I had to start drawing from it," he said. Already, he says, he has lost $35,000 in retirement money.

Nesbitt said what really bothers him is how quickly Wall Street turned upside down.

"I woke up one morning and it was all over the newspaper," he said. "By then it was too late to pull my money out of the markets."

Arnold, of Kearns, said she can relate. She says about 90 percent of her retirement plan at work is invested in equities.

At 42, Arnold still has some time for the market to recover. But with all her other worries, she has trouble keeping positive about the stock market's selloff.

"I'm sitting here, watching it all disappear," she said.

lesley@sltrib.com