When crazed movie fans, reckless hurricanes, and the relentlessly encroaching Atlantic threatened to dismantle the “Inn at Rodanthe,” she fell into such disrepair that the only way to save her was to pay a small fortune.  And to move her as far back from storms that raged up the Atlantic  as possible.

To the rescue came ardent “Nights in Rodanthe” movie fan Ben Huss from Newton, NC, handcuffs in tow.

Writer Nicholas Sparks made the enormous Rodanthe, NC house an icon when it was chosen to represent the inn where his characters, Richard Gere and Diane Lane met and sparked a flame in their lives which had been reduced to mere embers. Gere's  character in the movie was a surgeon being sued by a grieving husband and Diane played a woman separated from a cheating husband and was facing divorce. Ironically his characters were living the same tenuous drama the house, threatened by annual hurricanes and storms has endured.  And escaped the last one, Irene, on Hatteras Island just two months ago.

Huss is a bail bondsman who says “I was searching and searching for something (in my  life), and I found it when I found this house."

But first he had to buy her, which turned out to be almost more difficult than moving her to save  her from the city and Mother Nature, who seemed determined to send the Atlantic closer and closer to reclaim the beach..

Coworker Joey jokes, “Ben is usually a hardcore kinda’ guy who works with criminals, but he’s changed since his wife bought him that movie.  And what’s worse,” he laughs, “he’s made us watch it right here in the office a thousand times.”

"It's still the most photographed house on Hatteras Island," says Bonnie Rowe who manages the house as a popular vacation rental.

Huss says he closed on her the day they were going to condemn it, and he moved it on MLK Day. “It was the only way to save her,” he says.

“My wife and I are beach bums” (when he’s not running his bondsman business 7 ½ hours away from Hatteras Island), "and she bought me the movie in 2009 because she liked the picture on the front  of Diane and Richard walking hand in hand on the beach,” he says. “And I was hooked. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

Huss describes himself as a risk taker but says, “I struggled with the purchase for nine months, sometimes becoming physically ill over the pricey decision,” fraught with even more challenges ahead. “I made numerous offers through the realtor and ended up calling the owners in Pennsylvania when the city decided to condemn her and tear her down only to find out none of my offers had even been presented to the sellers.”

Financing was another hurdle, but he’d vowed by now to restore her to her movie décor for vacationers and fans to rekindle their love affairs with movies and mortals. Today, renters find the recreated blue room, den, Lanes bedroom, and even the Pussy Willow wallpaper, “just like in the movie,” says Huss.

But this true love story didn't  end with her reinvention. When Ben saw the size of Irene, who was barreling up the Atlantic and predicted to smash into Hatteras, he grabbed his wife and sheets of plywood and they headed for Rodanthe. They braved 100 mph winds for 36 hours says Ben, and the two seniors used a shop vac powered by a generator to quickly get rid of the water that gushed in and they secured the outside with plywood.

And so it was, the dinosaur Huss was determined to save, and precariously hauled it almost a mile down the beach to it’s present  location on Beacon Road, was fittingly dubbed Serendipity by the current rental company.

The bridge that's the lifeline to Hatteras Island, was washed out by Irene.  As soon as it  re-opened last week, renters moved into the house to live their own version of the popular movie.

Little did anyone know when Huss saved the house, that it  would become a living rewrite for the tear jerker ending Nicholas Sparks gave to the novel that's given this huge house and couples who stay there their own second chances.