One moment BettyMae Rollins lowered her head and wept. The next moment her chubby cheeks rolled upward, and she pierced the air with a hearty laugh.

The emotions stem from months of turmoil followed by a walk with angels.

Rollins, 60, is disabled and suffers from a host of ailments, ranging from diabetes to congestive heart failure.

She was evicted earlier this month from her Skowhegan home.

She had no place to go and no way to move her furniture until her “angel,” Kris McDermott of Skowhegan, stepped forward. Within a matter of days, McDermott and her family and friends had Rollins and her 60 years of belongings moved into a comfortable home in neighboring Madison.

“It was such a miracle,” Rollins said last week, seated in her new home behind a kitchen table that was covered with moving boxes. The year had been stressful enough before the eviction, she said, because her husband had died and she underwent emergency surgery on her hip.

“There were no ifs, ands, or buts. They just wanted her out,” Kris McDermott said of Rollins’ eviction.

McDermott, who co-owns Sandy and Daughter Auto Repair and U-Haul Service in Skowhegan, said people often ask for help whether or not they really need it, but she knew in her heart Rollins was different. The family had worked on Rollins’ car and knew of her disabilities and her financial status.

McDermott recalled that Rollins was hysterical when she called to inquire about U-Hauls on Dec. 14. After McDermott prodded her, Rollins told her she had little money but needed a truck to move her belongings before Dec. 16 or she would lose them.

“I told her not to worry. We would help her over the weekend,” McDermott said. She enlisted the volunteer help of her mother and father, Georgeanne and Sandy Wentworth, her 13-year-old son, Ryley Corson, and her husband, Tim. That morning she also noticed the local Sportsman’s Club was meeting so she stopped and enlisted their help.

“I had no idea what I was getting my friends and my family into,” McDermott said with a laugh.

Early Saturday when the McDermott family and their helpers arrived with a fleet of U-Haul trucks and trailers, they found five rooms, a porch and a cellar that were jam-packed with belongings. It took the volunteers until late Sunday night to finish the move. “People would drive by and ask if we needed help,” McDermott said.

“I think she’s touched a whole lot of lives; she’s a character and a hoot,” McDermott said.

The “hoot” part stems from Rollins’ sense of humor. She is known locally as the “bun” lady – not in reference to the sweet, fragrant kind of buns, but the backside of men. Rollins has taken and collected photographs of the covered buns of men, including Willie Nelson, Tim Sample and the late Dick Curless, and has them on display in multiple scrapbooks, a hobby she started years ago. Her trademark advertisement for the video store she operated for years in Skowhegan was “Hi, I’m BettyMae, your fun bun lady from BettyMae’s Video Plus.”

Rollins, who greets everyone – strangers and friends alike – with a motherly hug, said she had planned to live forever in her former home where she was among friends.

That all changed however, when her elderly landlord and friend died in September 2006. The woman’s children, who over the years had tried to get their mother to evict Rollins and sell the house, did so themselves.

Rollins attempted to buy the house but failed because no agency or bank would finance the purchase, she said. Her search for another suitable home came to a close in late November when she found a small bungalow in Madison that Maine Rural Development would finance.

Since her military son was in Iraq, she enlisted the Maine National Guard to help her move. When the closing was delayed, however, she could no longer get the Guard’s assistance because it was committed to other projects, she said. Rollins and a family member then tried to get donated help from a national moving company without success.

Rollins said she begged her former landlord’s family to let her stay in the house until the Dec. 11 closing on the Madison home, but her request was denied. After a court hearing and some delays, she received an eviction notice dated Dec. 5 that gave her 48 hours to leave the premises.

The family allowed Rollins to store her belongings at the house until Dec. 16, but she was forced to find another place to stay. She already had invested in a tank of home heating oil on Dec. 1 for the Skowhegan home and the few funds she had left she spent for a night’s lodging at a local motel on Dec. 7, the day she was evicted by a deputy sheriff.

When the local Federated Church learned of Rollins’ plight, another miracle occurred, she said. Rollins said the church paid her lodging at the motel until Dec. 16 when she and her furniture were settled in the new home.

“If anyone doesn’t believe in God and his miracles in our everyday lives after reading this story, well, I just don’t know what to say except it will make my heart sad for them,” Rollins said with a wide, warm smile. “I thank, with all my heart, love, and hugs, everyone who helped me through all of this, especially my angel,” she said.

McDermott said she is no angel; she just felt she needed to help Rollins. She has always lent people a hand who needed it, she said.

‘What you put into the universe, you get back,” McDermott said.