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Others -- lawyers and their clients -- are disdainful. They claim the company emphasizes sales and revenues, and shortchanges customers on Orkin's promise to protect houses and businesses against termites, and to repair damage caused by the pests.

Since these customers have entrusted what is often their most valued asset, their homes, to Orkin, what's at stake is both emotional and valuable. "I want to see Orkin go down," fumes Collier Black, an angry Florida homeowner who last year won a $750,000 judgment against the company.

Underscoring criticism of the company are mountains of evidence. More than 10,000 pages of court documents and supporting material were reviewed for this article. Among the items uncovered were 10 internal Orkin memos from the mid-1990s detailing "fraud, forgery and theft." "FFT" has become a rallying cry among Orkin critics.

One of the memos, from a South Georgia Orkin manager in 1996, states: "During the past several months there have been instances of fraud, theft and forgery in the company. ... We are also seeing far too many instances ... [of] finding customers being charged for services not rendered."

Also, Orkin and its competitors faced extraordinary challenges in recent decades. A highly effective chemical that killed and repelled termites was banned, and pest control companies were forced to use less toxic formulas. Nonetheless, Orkin continued to make the same guarantees to customers, and court case after court case argues the newer treatments didn't work.

That's the crisis Glen Rollins inherited. Most of the lawsuits stem from company operations in the 1980s and 1990s, before Rollins moved into the executive suite. What's clear, examining company literature and industry publications, is that Rollins, first as Orkin's executive vice president and since February as president, has been making changes. Company veterans who had presided over a culture that led to the litigation have been ousted. Compensation plans that emphasized sales rather than service have been altered.

Rollins won't concede past wrongdoing. But his spokeswoman, Martha Craft, comments: "The Orkin people you've read about (in the lawsuits) aren't the people who are with the company today."

The question is whether Rollins -- who is regarded favorably by even some of the company's detractors -- has the solutions. Now 38, Rollins began the climb up the corporate ladder in 1990, when he took over one of Orkin's most troubled offices, Arlington, Texas. That challenge, however, pales compared to reconciling the company's claims of integrity against charges leveled in lawsuits. Rollins insists the company will "push through" its current problems.

"Our services are more than keeping homes pest-free," Glen Rollins says. "It's about picking up the newspapers off the lawn. Many of our customers are old ladies, and we'll put in new light bulbs for them. We use the Cajun word, "lagniappe,' a little something extra, to describe what we do."

Here are some of the other faces of Orkin. Meet an ex-Orkin man, Wayne Cowart of Valdosta, Ga. The 30-year veteran of the pest control industry worked for Orkin for six years, including two as a top executive in charge of handling consumer claims. He's now a consultant who spends most of his time giving testimony against Orkin and other termite companies.

"If the Gambino (Mafia) family was doing what the Rollins family has done, there'd be a Senate investigation," says Cowart, referring to accusations of fraud and forgery against the company.

His spin on what went awry at Orkin is that the "company has stopped being a service-oriented company and is now a revenue-oriented company. The losers are the customers."

Meet one of Orkin's customers, Sarah Steinhardt, who teaches piano from her home near Emory University in Atlanta. "I catastrophize everything," Steinhardt quips about an incident earlier this summer. "So when I saw a hole in my wall, I freaked out."

Steinhardt had been an Orkin customer for years, and a student's dad works for the pest control giant. "He told me I had a guarantee, and Orkin was tremendous," Steinhardt says. "They had an inspector out within 24 hours, a supervisor out the next day and a repair guy out the day after that. They fixed the wall, painted it, everything.

"I was girding myself for an argument, but you know what? They surprised me. I'm delighted."

Meet another Orkin customer, one who isn't delighted. Maria Garcia, who built a home in the Tampa suburb of Temple Terrace, recalls that, "I called Orkin because it is the name you see a lot." Although an Orkin supervisor promised her a thorough inspection, "he was gone in 15 or 20 minutes."

Two years after Garcia's house was treated, termites were again swarming. "The Orkin people would say it's my fault, that there's moisture," Garcia says. "I said, "That's why I hired you.' I kept dealing with them for another five or six years, and one day termites swarmed through the wall."