Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Warning to all that have the rented Mini Storage buildings

My attitude with life right now is "life, I love you but I'm very angry with you and I want to break up".

We've had a really bad year so far and so have a lot of nice people we know and it seems as though it's not really getting better.

I lost my Dad a couple of years ago to, well I won't say cancer as thats not what killed him. It was the treatment, chemo, that actually killed him, but either way, I lost him.

The guy was, bless his heart, a pack rat extraordinaire. He had two HUGE storage units rented for many years. He started out with the biggest one they had at the place he was renting from, then took the next size down from that.

After he was gone we spent almost a month cleaning out the big one and condensing down to the smaller. We managed to get that done finally and what a job that was. Wheew.

Anyway, day before yesterday we get a call from the property management company that is taking care of the storage business. Seems as though one of the other people renting from them had been broken into and they were calling everyone to let them know what had happened.

This place we have a unit at used to belong to a tire sales store. The people that owned the tire business lost it due to financial troubles and the bank that financed it had repossessed it. 

Anyway, back to the phone call. the man told me that they wanted to let all their renters know about this break in, and thought the worst. And unfortunately I was right to be thinking the worst. Our unit was one of the ones that were hit. 

These thieves got into our unit, took a few tool boxes that were sitting up front and then just basically threw everything they could get their hands on, apparently looking for more stuff to steal. 

In addition to the tool boxes, they also took a very old glass jar that was about half to a quarter full of polished agates. Now while that is not a very valuable thing, it's of great sentimental value to me. My Dad when younger, was a rock hound with his Dad and they actually got the equipment like rock tumblers and cutting saws to work with the rocks. Those agates in that glass jar were what was left of the agates he and his Dad collected and polished.

Even my two kids when they were young went out with my Dad and collected a few of the agates in that jar, so the loss is one that we won't be able to replace.

The one bright spot in this whole mess it that the thieves did NOT get my Dads almost new wood working equipment or the rest of the tools in the back of the unit. The other thing I am very grateful for it the family rocking chair.

I have an old wooden rocker in the unit and while the thieves threw it towards the back of the unit, it didn't get damaged and for that I am sooooo thankful. That chair has rocked 3 generations of my family in it. My Mother and her brother, Myself when I was a baby, I rocked both my kids in that chair when they were babies, and my hopes are that if my children have kids, they will be rocked in that chair as well. So that chair not being damaged means a lot to me.

What these thieves are doing is they are cutting the locks off these units, taking what ever it is they want, and then putting another lock similar to the one they cut off, back on so it doesn't "look" like the units are being broken into.

We are going to start emptying out the unit this coming weekend. The place is in bank owned hands with no security measures in place and apparently this has been taking place in broad daylight. The site has no security people around, and no security cameras installed either.

So we are going to bring as much of our belongings home and store in our garage as possible and then look into another storage facility that has some security measures in place. I would caution anyone with rented mini storage to keep an eye on them and check them periodically.

2 comments:

  1. So sorry you are having to go through this. But thank you for sharing and for warning others.

    It should be greatly appreciated by all that rent from storage facilities.

    Your Friend,
    LouieTheseller

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Louie. I hope this blog entry prevents someone else from having this happen

    ReplyDelete