NEW YORK CITY — New York's "Hometown" paper, the New York Daily News, featured a story on Dec. 3 about SEIU CU member Onika Shepherd, who remembered how well her credit union treated her when she was in college and got a car loan. CUs were all about auto loans, right?

Wrong, found Shepherd, now married with a toddler. The CU member had saved for a down payment and grew frustrated when a mortgage broker offered her a high-interest home loan. "It made my head spin," said Shepherd, 29, who earns $46,000 a year as a membership organizer for Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union. A colleague suggested she try SEIU's credit union, according to the story by Lore Croghan. Shepherd found a home in South Ozone Park, Queens, "with rose bushes in the front yard and parking spaces in the back."

"As the subprime mortgage crisis deepens, old-fashioned credit unions are gaining popularity with homebuyers. These nonprofit financial institutions use members' deposits to fund mortgages. Borrowers are members," goes the story. That's no surprise to those already familiar with CUs, of course, but the rest of the world is still in discovery mode.