tonight on "nightline" -- guardian agent. for americans fighting to save their clothes from foreclosure, he's a real estate god send. an expert at getting banks to back off. tonight, we show you how he does it. plus, the shocking truth. a look inside the top secret headquarters of taser international, and the controversy behind a weapon that can kill whose makers say -- >> put the gun down right now. >> -- it's a lifesaver. and bachelor parties. drinks, dance, diapers. how one last party before the

bund offal joy arrives has become all the rage for fathers to be. good evening, i'm cynthia mcfadden. as the martin luther king jr. holiday comes to an end this evening, we begin with an all too rare ray of hope in the housing market. foreclosures in 2011 fell back to a number not seen since the start of the recession in 2007. unfortunately, that still translates into 1.9 million foreclosures, and that's a lot of families. tonight, we meet a man who does what he can to turn that number around. here's abc's chris cuomo with an encore reality check.

>> i'm hoping they'll be like, okay, have my house. >> reporter: heather bought her massachusetts home eight years ago. right now, she's fighting the bank to keep it. a date has been set to auction it off. >> when i heard people were losing jobs and whatnot in this economy, that i knew i could squeak by. but unfortunately that wasn't the case. >> reporter: heather's a single mom with a 14-year-old son named doni. >> leave it. >> reporter: she also takes care of her 80-year-old mother geraldine. >> it's not that i want to stay home and have a free house. i want to work. >> reporter: you're just a person who got stuck on hard times. you're not running away from your debt. >> no, i want to pay my bills. i want a payment i can afford. i want to pay my mortgage. did you have a good day? >> reporter: heather was laid off from a full-time job in sales for a beverage company. her new part-time job, even with

help from her mother and ex-husband, isn't enough to make ends meet. >> i was just squeaking by. i'd pay on the 15th, you know, and then it turned into the 16th and then the 17th and then it would be like the 29th. >> reporter: so heather asked her bank, gmac, to modify her mortgage which then cost about $2600 a month. >> i would say, listen, we can resolve this. why don't you guys just drop my interest rate. this is a no brainer. >> reporter: the bank's response, she says, was a barrage of letters and collection calls. >> i mean, i'm a hard-working single mother taking care of my 80-year-old mother and i'm just trying to get by and survive. no, i want to thrive. i'm sick of just surviving. i want to thrive. i want to have a good life. >> reporter: and they can help you do that? >> they can, by just doing what needs to be done by modifying my mortgage because i'll be able to afford it. i don't know why they don't want to help me.

>> you're broke, aren't you? >> there's no george baileys left in the world, you know what i mean? >> that's my business. >> reporter: but maybe there are. meet bruce. a man with a gift for getting mortgages modified. >> americans own their homes. this is my spot on earth. i've done everything right. this is being threatened. >> reporter: the 54-year-old doesn't look like george bailey but he knows banks. he's actually a former management consultant who worked in finance. now from his cramped offices above a pool hall, bruce fights all day against the biggest banks. >> do you anticipate this payment would stay right about the -- >> reporter: and saved homes for people like heather. bruce has been fighting heather's bank to modify her loan eight months now. >> you get to the point where i can say the mortgage has been changed, it's filed. absolute heaven. >> reporter: bruce says he can

appreciate heaven because he lived through hell. though he's a savvy businessman, he was once laid off and nearly lost his own home. >> i've been through this. i know what these people are going through. >> reporter: he figured if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone. so bruce decided to help others get their homes back. >> i can't sit here and not help these people and -- it would be like walking away from somebody in an accident. >> reporter: his not for profit hsi trust home savers has taken over 200 cases since he started it in 2009. bruce says he's gotten a good outcome in almost all of them. >> these are the folks that worked, saved, put their money into their homes. borrowed against their pension to get their homes. they are the american dream. >> reporter: home savers doesn't work for free. bruce uses a sliding scale, allowing people to pay what they can. >> hi, how are you? >> reporter: working together with people like heather, bruce can accomplish big things.

remember that auction date? bruce made some calls, talked the talk and voila. >> luckily, you know, bruce worked his magic and we got it pushed to february 2nd. >> reporter: and now that battle they've been fighting may be coming to a happy close. so far, heather's monthly payment has been reduced from about $2,600 to just under $1,700. after we called gmac, they agreed to postpone heather's auction date until march. in a statement, they say they are committed to working with borrowers like heather. >> i live in this country. i have a home. i want to live the dream. that's all i want to do is i want to live the dream. >> don't we all? our thanks to chris cuomo. just ahead, taser use is way up. and the numbers might shock you. we get an inside look. confused by all the nutritional information out there?

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since the early 1990s, the taser has become a law enforcement favorite. especially it seems in cities like chicago, where taser use by police has grown fivefold in just the last three years. the question is whether the spike in tasering makes the public more or less save. tonight, we go inside the company that makes them for answers. here's my co-anchor bill weir with an encore presentation. >> reporter: every three minutes, someone somewhere in the world -- >> don't taze me, bro. >> reporter: gets tasered and that's just by law enforcement. it doesn't include all these

"jackass" inspired knuckleheads who do it for kicks and youtube or the tough-guy reporters who want a first person perspective. or the directors of films like "the hangover" who know complete loss of motor function is comedy gold. >> right in the nuts. >> whose that'ser is this? >> reporter: maybe scenes like this one in "nurse jackie" are only funny because we know this weapon is designed to inflict temporary pain. >> 15 minutes, you're good as new. >> reporter: that hasn't stopped taser international for becoming a magnet for lawsuits and scorn. greatly upsetting the braerps who built it. >> the whole reason we started this company is we want to get people to stop killing each other. in order to do that, you know, you have to take some steps that are sometime also not pleasant. >> reporter: do you spend more on research and development or legal fees? >> there have been years where litigation has been higher than our research. what you don't hear about are all the cases it avoids. >> reporter: rick and tom smith founded taser in the early '90s

after two friends were shot to death in a road rage incident and their mother started to worry. >> he tried pepper spray. we kind of looked at that and said we can put man on the moon but the way people defend themselves also is the way we fought the revolutionary war. >> reporter: so they tracked down the ex-nasa scientist who invented the taser and using parts from ace hardware modified it for a broader market. >> we take a little piece of a metal hanger, then we have to do the winding procedure back and forth. >> reporter: the first time they tried to sell it at a police convention a tough as nails marine named hans volunteered to see what it could do. >> i shot him with an air taser. and he stood there and had a conversation with me. said most people would be on the ground right now. and the whole audience is laughing. >> reporter: but hans agreed to come back and once they worked out the bugs, the laughing stopped. >> he stood up and he said, this is a game changer. rrmt the taser uses comb pressed air to shoot. so it has all the kick of a

party popper. the gun sends 50,000 volts down two wires and into the body through straightened fish hooks. with a good connection, the electricity painfully confuses the electric nervous system till the trigger is released. have you ever seen a test subject able to yank these out? >> no, they can't control their motor function. you can't control motor function, right. >> reporter: when cops started buying them, it only took about a decade for taser to grow from a garage into a multibillion dollar company. they now have retina scanners at the front door. >> identification is completed. >> reporter: and an atrium inspired by "star wars." almost half a million cops around the world carry them today. more than 1 million people have been tasered by those officers. and around 400 have died. can you absolutely guarantee that your product would never, ever cause cardiac arrest in any person? >> no, we can't make that guarantee. best i can tell you is these devices make dangerous

situations safer. >> reporter: there's the device and then there's the person holding it. >> right. >> reporter: because cops figure, hey, no muss, no fuss. >> we spend a lot of time in our training of law enforcement officers trying to avoid what we call taser dependency. >> reporter: taser misuse inspired the brothers to come up with what may be another law enforcement game changer. it's called axon. >> basically the system fits by sitting on top of the head. >> reporter: an evidence gathering cam ra worn on the side of a officer's head. that's pretty good. one step closer to "robo cop." >> what, i'm going to record? but then once they try it a couple times they realize, oh, my gosh, i get accused of all these awful things all the time. >> put the gun down. put the gun down right now. >> reporter: axon video helped back up the story of cops who shot a suspect in arkansas. along with a taser, the smiths believe their inventions can save municipalities millions in lawsuits. >> he's pointing it at us.

>> reporter: and countless lives but as long as there are headline-grabbing mistakes, there will be critics. >> they say, well, we shouldn't use a taser. but they never go to the next step which says in that particular situation, if not a taser, then what? >> one tase. >> an analogy i use sometimes is chemotherapy. if you've got cancer, they do awful thing tossing your body to try and save you. our society has a cancer. we're a violent, dangerous society. we have a device that while it's not pleasant can make a huge difference. >> game changing technology from bill weir. next up, it's all the rage. one last stand for fathers to be. ♪ [ male announcer ] when kelley blue book's kbb.com gave the 2012 camry a best resale value award, we were delighted. ♪

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of joy and plenty of responsibilities. but these days, it also comes with a party. they're called bachelor parties. one final blowout before all the ripe diapers and sleepless nights. here's abc's t.j. winick with an encore presentation for tonight's "sign of the times." ♪ >> reporter: you might say it's dave's last night of freedom. that his life is about to change

forever. yep, it's one of those nights where things could get a little out of control. the hangover anyone? >> road trip. >> reporter: only this is not dave's bachelor party. it's his dad-chelor party. his girlfriend of five years is eight months pregnant with a baby girl they're naming olivia. >> i heard on the radio that the new trend was daddy showers where guys get together, they buy diners, and they drink beer. well, i was, like, that seems kind of, you know, classless. let's do this big. >> reporter: with just a few hours till the boys show up, dave and his best friend rich are making some last-minute stops. truth be told, lesley is not so hot on the whole idea and she's not shy about it. >> honestly, i thought it was stupid. honestly. i still am not a huge fan of it

but i guess i'm getting diapers out of it. >> yes, you are. >> reporter: the diapers in exchange for beer is a staple known as the diaper keg. >> i let everybody know, what brand you wanted, what sizes you wanted. this is all for you. >> mm. i'm sure it is. >> reporter: sure enough, dave's friend show up to the preparty armed not with budweiser or coors but with huggies and pampers. >> wow. >> reporter: have you ever heard of a dad-chelor party? >> no, first one. >> reporter: it may be their first but according to the pregnancy website the bump.com it likely won't be their last. >> enjoy, boss. >> we're finding moms to be on the bump.com are reporting 1 in 5 dads are either attending or having a party thrown in their honor. >> 1, 2, 3! >> reporter: far be it for me to question the need for one last

prebaby bustout. as a first-time father, i, like so many of today's dads, waited a little longer to become a parent. >> they have babies later in life and they know what they're going to be giving up, those late mornings sleeping in, those late nights going out, and they really do need to prep themselves for a big life change. >> at 8:00 p.m. sharp, it's all aboard the party bus. they're headed to mohegan sun casino for a night of gambling and dancing. ♪ at the nightclub, dave is treated like a vip. >> my man dave here is going to be having a baby girl in about four weeks. >> my cousins. >> reporter: next, it's off to the black jack table. >> come on. my baby needs shoes. >> reporter: where the dad-chelor wins big, $3,000. >> i feel like i'm going to have to buy something nice for both leslie and olivia. >> reporter: by the time the party wraps up at 4:00 a.m., he

sounds like a man ready to settle down. >> guys, go home, don't wake the neighbors. >> reporter: the next morning, dave knows just what to do with his winnings. >> monday, i'm going to go buy an engagement ring. she gave me the opportunity to go out with the boys and do the dad-chelor thing so i want to do the engagement right. >> reporter: sure enough, dave popped the question later that week, which begs another question -- do you think you'll need a bachelor party? >> i think every guy needs a bachelor party to send him off, you know? i would never want to rule something like that out. >> reporter: not a surprise really. after all, even "the hangover" had a sequel. >> so consider this part one. >> yeah, that's a good way to look at it, part one. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm t.j. winick in connecticut. >> well, shortly after we shot this story, little olivia was born. dave says fatherhood is, quote, absolutely awesome, that his daughter is a sweetheart. hi