TAUNTON, Mass. — When Kathy Zorotheos retired in 2014 after working for nearly four decades, she spent her days walking around the Oak Hill Mobile Home Park where she had been living for several years.

“That’s all I did. I just walked,” she said. “That’s what started the whole thing.”

On her walks, she’d wave to neighbors as they drove past the rows of mobile homes. But not everyone waved back. So she waved more, waved bigger and rarely missed an opportunity to speak with fellow residents. Soon, she came to know many who live in the park’s more than 250 homes.

Then, in 2015, she received a notice in the mail that the park was being sold to an out-of-state corporation.

Zorotheos feared that rents could soar and worried about how effectively absentee owners could run the park. There was also the chance that new ownership could ultimately mean redevelopment of the land for other uses. That’s what happened to residents of a park in Foxborough, half an hour away, when the Patriots needed a new stadium nearly 20 years ago.

Zorotheos started Googling: “How do you buy a mobile home park?”

The answer: Rally the residents. It would take somebody who knew everybody, and luckily, Zorotheos matched that description.

What followed was a scramble to gather everyone, a vote in favor of buying the park themselves, and a crash-course in forming a cooperative and getting loans. When the owners of Oak Hill brought the issue to court, unsure if they could pull out of the deal with the company they had agreed to sell to, Zorotheos worked the phones once again, urging residents to come to court and lend their support. Dozens did, riding a school bus to a hearing.