WASHINGTON COUNTY — First, the good news.

Austin McKee, the Hancock man laid off from Rayloc last year, as well as Hagerstown newlyweds Patrick and Lauren Smith Thomas have gotten jobs or are very close.

Matt and Allison Weaver, who put their Halfway rancher up for sale last winter when the market was looking particularly gloomy, have sold the house.

The 200 employees at Williamsport Retirement Village, who gave up more than 2 percent of their pay for several months, have gotten small bonuses.

But then, the larger presence of the recession still looms.

“It certainly hasn’t gotten any better,” said John Barr, who owns Ellsworth Electric Inc. and has about 200 employees in Hagerstown and Chambersburg, Pa. “We’re still doing everything in our power to retain everyone. We’re bidding anything and everything. Not getting much. Seems like there’s a lot of desperation out there.”

To Bill Massa, chief executive officer of Clean Earth Inc., which had 16 or 17 employees at its recycling operation near Funkstown in March, things have gotten even more bleak.

“Unfortunately, we have only seen the economy get worse,” Massa said. “... We just have had to make some deeper cuts over this last month or two when it became clear the economy was not coming back any time soon.”

Clean Earth has had to lay off “a significant percentage” of its local workers, Massa said, declining to be more specific.

To see how they’re doing now, The Herald-Mail contacted many of the local people whose economic stories it has told over the past year as we grappled with the recession.

So, whatever happened to ...?

Nancy Shulley

You met Shulley in March, when she found herself in the “nightmare” of being caught between a mortgage she couldn’t afford and a sale her lender’s insurer wouldn’t approve.

“The house is still sitting there,” Shulley said recently. She moved out of the two-story brick house at 114 E. Irvin Ave. in Hagerstown late last summer.

Although she stopped paying the mortgage soon afterward, Shulley said she hasn’t heard anything from the lender, U.S. Bank. Last December, its attorneys threatened foreclosure.

But, as of early July, the bank still hadn’t filed for foreclosure, according to the clerk of the court’s office at Washington County Circuit Court. A spokeswoman at U.S. Bank’s headquarters in Minnesota declined to comment.

The house remained vacant.

Shulley, a research associate at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Md., bought the house in 2005 for $191,000. She refinanced the mortgage twice and, after being unable to sell the house in 2008, thought she got U.S. Bank’s OK to sell it for $148,300.

Then, after moving out, she learned U.S. Bank had insurance against such losses and the insurer wouldn’t approve the sale unless Shulley agreed to pay back part of the claim. When she refused, the insurer refused to approve the sale.

Shulley complained to the Maryland Insurance Administration about the insurer’s demand.

“It’s like they’re holding my house for ransom,” she said.

By mid-July, the agency still hadn’t issued a decision.

“I understand that it is our intention to issue a determination in the next couple of weeks,” spokeswoman Karen Barrow said.

Shulley said she also hasn’t heard anything further from the City of Hagerstown, which billed her $925.81 in March after a radiator burst inside the house, and 177,000 gallons had gushed out by the time a Realtor happened by with a client.

Whether the dampness and damage inside was remedied isn’t clear.

A spokeswoman for Safeguard Properties Inc., which U.S. Bank hired by last February to maintain the property, said recently to protect the privacy of homeowners, she couldn’t talk publicly about specific properties.

Shulley, who is renting elsewhere now, called the situation “really pretty disappointing. Absolutely nothing has happened. And next month, I will have been out of there a year.”

Shulley said with her credit so damaged, she’s dreading the day she must buy a car or anything else for which she’ll need a loan.

“They are sounding like scary things now,” she said. “If I did try to buy a car, they would, of course, try to say why I would need a hugely high interest rate.”

So, “I’m just trying to establish excellent rental history, paying the rent on time, like I normally would. ... After this, I don’t know that I want to ever buy another house.”

Ralph Crawford Jr.

Crawford, 38, had just bought his very first house when we met him last September.

Buying the half a double at 551 Frederick St. had worried him.

“I’ve had friends lose their house, have bankruptcy,” he said back then.

But now, Crawford said, he’s feeling “pretty good, hanging in there” as his longtime job at United Parcel Service seems steady.

He said he refinanced his mortgage, bringing the interest rate down to 5.5 percent from 5.7.

Matt and Allison Weaver

The Weavers, forced to buck the economy last January by putting their brick rancher at 10900 Clinton Ave. on the market, sold it March 31 for $200,000.

That’s just $15,000 less than the original list price, said Hagerstown broker Jim Ward, whose Advantage Realty represented the Weavers. And, he said, the sale came much sooner than the 180 days the market was averaging.

“Probably the major factor on it is the price,” he said. “It was priced very well.”

The Weavers, who couldn’t be reached for comment now that they have moved, had to sell because Matt Weaver had gotten a new job in Timonium, Md.

Who bought the Weavers’ former home in Halfway?

That would be Kirk and Krista Singleton.

He works at FedEx Ground, and she works part time at Toys-R-Us.

As it happens, the Singletons had been renting a home in the neighborhood.

“We knew it had gone up for sale, but it was a little bit beyond our reach,” said Krista Singleton, 35. “We had spent months looking at houses, like ‘property virgins,’” she said, laughing, referring to a TV show.

After the Weavers dropped their asking price, the Singletons — realizing “there was very little to do as far as renovations” — made an offer on what was to become the first house they had ever bought.

“We just really like it,” Krista said. “It’s a beautiful house.”

And it will be where the couple raises the baby that’s due this November, in addition to the two children they have now.

Four who’d been laid off

We met Bob Harris, Austin McKee, Janet Martinez and Gladys Gray in April.

Harris, 61, McKee, 57, and Martinez, 52, lost their jobs last year when Rayloc shut its automotive parts remanufacturing plant in Hancock. Gray, 56, lost her job in May 2008 when a company closed in Frederick.

All four joined many other unemployed workers at the Western Maryland Consortium, a training and help agency based in Hagerstown.

Just this month, McKee was hired by Northrop Grumman, which modifies airplanes here for the military. He is working as a clerk, handing out parts — a job similar to what he did as parts department coordinator at Rayloc.

“Aw, I was just tickled to death” to land the new job, McKee said. “I was thrilled; ecstatic, maybe.”

The computer training he received at the consortium definitely helped, he said.

“They seemed very impressed with that, that even though I had been out of a job, with my age, that I was still willing to go back to school and that I was willing to go on in my education and look for another job,” McKee said.

Martinez seemed to be on the brink of good news, now taking final tests for a job at an area law enforcement agency.

“I’ve prayed about it and I certainly feel fortunate to even be considered for this position,” she said.

She praised staff at the consortium, where she still goes for 20 hours of job training each week.

“They’ve been wonderful in helping us over this hump, not only for the knowledge we’ve been able to obtain, but for the self-esteem, ’cause you’re feeling pretty low” after losing a job, Martinez said.

Harris and Gray still are taking classes, with no job prospects in sight. Gray is in full-time training at Hagerstown Community College and Harris has enrolled for a second year of masonry studies at James Rumsey Technical Institute near Hedgesville, W.Va.

Harris said he’s happy for both McKee and Martinez, and is optimistic about his own chances this coming year after he earns a certificate from Rumsey.

Laura Scuffins

Like thousands of other young adults, Scuffins graduated from college this year — into a slow economy that, still, has offered her neither the public relations nor the news reporter job she would like.

Since her story was told in May, the Washington County sports and academic standout said she has received a lot of business contacts and at least two job interviews, but she still is working as a hostess at Always Ron’s restaurant in Hagerstown.

Scuffins, 22, said she is grateful for that, and for the contacts she has gained as diners have recognized her from the story.

One is a woman who works at a federal agency in Rockville, Md., and who has been “very, very nice and very, very helpful” in helping her apply there, Scuffins said.

Other diners have been handing her their business cards, she said.

Three employers

In March, when we checked in with Ellsworth owner Barr, Brooke Grove Foundation President Keith Gibb and a Clean Earth manager, the name of the game in keeping people employed was “creativity.”

Barr was putting some workers on “honey-do” projects at his church and family farm, and Gibb and his retirement home employees were taking pay cuts. Clean Earth was rotating its layoffs among workers so all still had benefits and something of a paycheck.

Unfortunately, Clean Earth CEO Massa said recently, such “very creative, smart business” strategies weren’t enough as sales continued dropping into the summer.

Clean Earth’s construction markets have improved some in regions such as Philadelphia and New York, but its territory in Delaware and Maryland is “just very, very slow,” he said.

Like Massa, Barr doesn’t expect to see any economic health until at least the end of 2009 and maybe not until early 2010.

Gibb, whose 500 employees include the 200 at Williamsport Retirement Village, had called “very humbling” his workers’ willingness to accept pay cuts for all, instead of a layoff for a few.

Gibb recently announced cost-cutting efforts are allowing cautious optimism. He said each worker would receive a one-time bonus equal to 2 percent of his or her total earnings in January, February and March.

“We do not believe it would be wise for us to put through pay raises in August 2009,” he told employees. “There is just too much risk attached to that decision. The risk involves jeopardizing jobs or taking the chance that we would have to ask for it back if things deteriorate financially.”

The newlyweds

There’s a storybook ending in the making for newlyweds Patrick and Lauren (Smith) Thomas.

You met them in June after they had graduated in May from Towson (Md.) University and were planning to get married Saturday, July 11, even though neither had landed a job.

The wedding, performed in front of 140 guests, went well.

It was even sweeter because the Monday before, Patrick, 24, began working as a teller at Hagerstown Trust.

And Lauren, who will be 22 soon, had been offered a job as a nurse at an area hospital if she passes a national certification exam.

“Everything fell into place. God is good,” Cindy Smith said in July while her daughter and Patrick were on their honeymoon in the Caribbean.

“It was awesome. Everything started moving for them,” added Tammy Thomas, Patrick’s mother.