From holding the distinct title of loan officer to being vice president of lending of The Mortgage Exchange, Harvey Peddle’s life is as anticipatory as the behavior of a child on the night of Christmas Eve. It’s a fickle beast, the mortgage business, but he’s been handling it with ease for years now.
Following different ventures for a good majority of his adult life, Peddle wasn’t always native to the mortgage world. He had a few gigs as the owner of laundromats, but that life soon wasn’t stable enough. After the encouragement of his wife, he decided to take on the wholesale side of mortgage-related affairs and sell to brokers, banks and so forth.
By dumb luck and sheer grit, Peddle started to establish himself as a legitimate mortgage-monger. He made a handful of career-altering decisions, ones that worked out for the better.
“I ran into Dan Fowler, who was working at Premier Mortgage, when I first started getting involved in the mortgage business. He told me, ‘Harvey, just come in and be a loan officer and work retail with us.’ That's what I did. Eventually, we decided to partner up and start our own business, Lakeshore Mortgage, becoming partners for 10 years. We're still friends, and we always help each other out and stay in contact, but then I had a little incident. I call it a sabbatical, one that ended up shutting down my business,” Peddle said.
That sabbatical wasn’t exactly what he originally pictured for himself. A sabbatical usually welcomes the opportunity for one to vacation and travel away from the obligations of their vocation. However, that was not the case for Peddle. Instead of visiting beaches or touring prominent cities throughout the world, he found himself in a dire situation, and his life has not been the same since.
“I just couldn’t stop coughing, so I went to the hospital on February 23, 2022, in Michigan City. The doctor saw me and said I needed to go to the ER as quickly as possible because my heart rate was over 200, and that's the last thing I remember. I finally woke up and got out of the hospital on May 5. This time last year, I was in a coma, staying in the hospital for over 70 days,” he said.
What it was that kept Peddle there for quite a while was a rare condition called pulmonary embolism. It occurs when blood clots form in the lungs, and its effects vary from person-to-person. With Peddle’s variation, there’s only a 7% survival rate, so his being alive and well at this point in time is a miracle in and of itself.
“I never used to visit the doctor, but I’ve learned my lesson. When I was in a coma, my whole body shut down. I was on dialysis, I was on a ventilator, and my lungs just weren't working. The doctors let me know that my heart had no oxygen, and they didn't know how it still kept beating and never gave up. Gradually, everything started coming back, and I started getting better each day. I look at life differently now. It's not that I didn't appreciate it, but I had so much focus in the wrong areas. Now I focus on friends, family, and health,” he said.
Since the health scare that took his life by storm, Peddle has never been in a better state of mind. Nowadays, he spends most of his time working and building his business to be something greater than it was before. Even without promoting himself on social media, he’s still able to attract attention, his business booming due to a constant, steady influx of clients who happen to be his favorite part about the job as a whole.
“Taking care of and meeting the people is all it is. Helping them get their homes is what I really enjoy most. I will always take care of the client,” Peddle said.
His daughter living in New York and his son in Denver, Peddle travels every now and then in order to meet up with his children. His life and the lives of his wife and children now revolve around their respective work, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the time to travel on the weekends to visit and spend quality time with the family.
Living in Valparaiso has helped Peddle to relish the little things. After everything that turned into a nightmare for him, he’s sure to never again see and then digest anything in life as insignificant. All is now something to be celebrated.
“I love the community, I love the people, and I love the businesses. Valpo has always been home to me. It's kind of funny because the simple pleasures are the best part of life. I took how many friends I have and the joy of living here for granted, but now it’s all so much bigger than before,” he said.