Thieves hit storage facility in Lynnwood, dozens of victims

LYNNWOOD -- Jarrett Roger`s small Lynnwood apartment now doubles as a storage unit for some of his most prized possessions; at least those he has left.

Rogers says he is one of 27 customers who had their storage unit broken into and ransacked at the Public Storage on Highway-99 in Lynnwood.

"There's a little ring where the lock goes through and they cut from the bottom up, just about an 1/8 of an inch to a 1/4 of an inch and then bend the piece of metal and the lock comes right off, burglary victim Jarrett Rogers said.

Rogers says he's had the storage unit for six years.

He lost things with great financial value and things that had great sentimental value too.

"I had some coin collections. I had some jewelry. I had a baseball card collection. These are my sports shirts from when the Mariners made the playoffs for the first time when Ken Griffey, Jr. was on the team, back in '92 and a couple of those shirts were missing,” Rogers said.

Rogers also lost irreplaceable things he inherited from his parents and grandparents and a collection of vintage video games.

Rogers estimates his total loss at 6-thousand dollars.

He's paid for insurance all this time, but he still may be out of luck.

The fine print warns customers that not everything is covered under the insurance policy.

"There's a couple of paragraphs where they talk about money and jewelry and coins and valuables like that, electronics and things like that won't be covered probably,” Rogers said.

We spoke with the Public Storage manager, but he referred us to the corporate office in California.

They won't be available until Monday.

Rogers is still making a list of what's missing and he's coming to grips with the fact that some of things are gone forever and that is troubles could be just beginning.

"They went through my tax paperwork. They took them out of the envelope so I'm sure they got my social security number so it's kind of disturbing,” Rogers said.

He’s now worried about identity theft.

Police believe the number of victims will increase, because it is likely, they say, that customers who haven’t visited their unit in a while may not know they have been victimized.

The best advice is to read the fine print on your contract and never leave anything of value or anything that can’t be replaced in a storage unit.