During the last week of March, Apple reached a record market value of $754 billion, Google tweaked a policy to protect its $22-billion-a-quarter advertising business and Yahoo inched toward closing a $4.83-billion sale. Meanwhile, Judy Pavlick drove around her Sunnyvale, Calif., mobile home park collecting plastic bottles and empty drink cans to save her future.

At a recycling rate of 5 to 10 cents a bottle, the 70-year-old’s attempt to raise $10,000 to campaign for a rent control measure seemed like a long shot. But living in the heart of Silicon Valley — where rents keep soaring, outside interests are encroaching and protections for renters are scant — what else was she going to do?

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It costs only $200 to file the initial paperwork to get a measure on the ballot in Sunnyvale. But getting a ballot measure passed is more expensive and difficult, said Juliet Brodie, an attorney who represented the Mountain View Tenants Coalition in its successful push for rent control last year.

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“You can’t just take a notepad and get signatures,” Brodie said.

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“This is a free country and anybody with a filing fee can file a lawsuit,” said Brodie, the attorney who helped Mountain View get rent control. “If we allow that to prevent us from making good policy, that’s just not reasonable.”