Man Says National Self Storage Mistakenly Auctioned Off Dead Father's Possession

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - Precious keepsakes are gone after being sold to the highest bidder, but the owner says it should've never happened.

Ryan Carr says he had no idea his things were gone until his father passed away.

"My father was diagnosed with leukemia on May 4 of last year," said Carr.

Last week, Carr's father, Mike, a former West Sacramento firefighter, lost his battle with leukemia.

"He passed away last Saturday morning," said Carr.

It's a loss Carr had time to prepare for, but there was another blow he never saw coming when he went to retrieve his father's uniform from his National Self Storage unit for the funeral.

"I knew the turnouts were in my storage locker," said Carr. "I went to the locker and found a different lock on there."

It turns out that at some point National Self Storage cut the lock to Carr's unit and auctioned off the items inside, including his father's uniform.

"For the past five years I've been there; it's been paid," said Carr.

Carr says he is up to date on rent and believes National made a mistake when they transferred him out of one unit to another because of water damage.

He says an employee marked the new unit number on the contract but might not have updated their records.

"I'm very sad, because, you know, my dad trusted me to keep these things," Carr said.

"At this point it is unclear what actually happened. Rather than speculate, we need to complete our investigation before issuing further comment. Rest assured that if we made an error, we will make it right," National said in a statement.

Carr just hopes somehow he can get his precious keepsakes from his dad back.

"Hopefully those people would be kind enough to return them," he said.