"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
Maya Angelou
In the days, weeks, and months following our realization that our someone had been entering our storage unit over a 4 to 8 month period of time through the walls of the units adjacent to ours, after removing all of the screws and nuts and bolts that secured the walls in place, and stealing from us, one box of items at a time, neither the owners nor the managers of this facility helped us. In fact, neither the owners nor the managers returned our calls, though we tried calling numerous times and left messages pleading with them to call us back to discuss the break-in. During the three days that we waited for Rita to return our calls, the people responsible for stealing more than $12,000 worth of personal items from our unit could easily have continued taking items from ours as well as the other units, or perhaps they might have been captured on tape. But we'll never know, because the staff at Guardian chose to ignore our calls and requests to contact us. Instead, they made US feel like criminals for reporting the crime.
When we finally cornered the onsite manager she was sitting her office staring at the wall while her daughter played on the computer beside her: clearly too busy to call me back. She was immediately defensive when I asked why she hadn't returned my calls; then she tried to deny that it was possible that someone broke into our unit, ignoring the fact that we were standing in front of her in tears, and more than $12,000 of our valued possessions were missing. You don't "just misplace" a kayak, two tents, a rolling suitcase full of camping equipment, three micronesian masks, boxes full of my husband's artwork, a box full of wedding silverware, copperware, pewter steins, a bass guitar, Fender amp, two priceless vintage accordions, a PA system, a box of my grandmother's hummel collectibles (she died when I was three), and more. When we did finally convince Rita to come with us and take a look at the unit, she wouldn't even walk inside to take a close look at the walls. As she stood there skeptically, challenging the validity of our claim even while I pointed at a gaping hole in the wall between our unit and the adjacent one, she made us feel like criminals.
Thank God my husband had the poise to suggest to Rita that we change units and was calm-witted enough to talk her into offering us the current "move-in special" of half off, which she said "was only valid from now until we close today." That gave us three hours to move everything we owned...at night. Unfortunately, we still had to file the police report, so we couldn't take advantage of the offer.
We filed a police report and a detailed insurance claim the day after we met with Rita and did everything we could to assist the police and insurance agents in their investigations. The policeman was sympathetic but not optimistic that he'd catch anyone. Luckily the insurance representative evaluated our claim, the photographs we took of the break-in damage, and paid us in full for the items we lost. That's lucky for us.....but not so lucky for the rest of Guardian's tenants.
When I went back to my "old" storage unit a few days after we finally vacated it, I wasn't surprised that the door of our unit was still sitting wide open. The wall was still gaping open into the adjacent unit, where a deployed marine was storing his or her belongings. Someone could easily have slipped inside that unit in the days since we left it, but clearly Guardian's staff could care less. I think that negates anything the owner or manager could possibly say about their philosophy of safekeeping. Almost seems like an invitation, don't you think?
Either that, or an inside job. read more
