SANDY — Another customer of a storage unit company is saying she, too got little help from the business after thieves cleared out her storage unit.

This comes after a woman told KSL-TV on Monday she discovered her Public Storage unit in Millcreek last weekend burglarized, and the response from Public Storage left her frustrated.

Lilly Stone said she rented a unit at the Public Storage in Sandy in February 2020, as she got ready to move into a dorm at the University of Utah. She put everything she owned in storage, from expensive musical equipment, to furniture, to paintings and books she created as a child and teen, to journals and pictures.

"We had about, I want to say, like 40 boxes," Stone remembered. "It was like my entire life had been in that storage unit."

When she came back mid-summer to grab a guitar she custom-made in high school, Stone couldn't open the lock. She soon figured out why.

"Thieves snapped off my previous lock, replaced it with their own," Stone explained.

Stone and a couple of friends bought a bolt cutter, and with a Public Storage employee watching, Stone said she broke into her own unit. As the door opened, Stone described seeing only a few open boxes and her nightstand sitting there. Everything else was gone.

Even more upsetting to her, Stone shared, was how the employee reacted after watching Stone discover her storage unit ransacked.

"The woman with me immediately sees me break down crying. Like, I fall to my knees, sobbing on the ground," Stone remembered.

She continued that her friend asked the employee what to do next.

"And she hands us the pamphlet for Orange Door Insurance, and she walks away. She goes back to her desk, and it was up to my friend to call 911."

Related:

Woman says Millcreek storage facility did little to protect unit from thieves

A Salt Lake Valley woman is sharing a warning with others after finding her storage unit cleaned out. She's also concerned with how the facility responded to the theft.

It's similar to what Kate Van Wagoner recounted on Monday. She found out last weekend her Public Storage unit in Millcreek was cleaned out, and both she and Unified police said a lack of security cameras at the facility meant the case was nearly impossible to investigate.

Van Wagoner described showing up at her storage unit during business hours and finding no employee on-site, and the security gate wide open without being monitored.

In Van Wagoner's case, she said her original lock was still intact, but the door had been tampered with.

After calling a corporate number she was given, Van Wagoner said she hadn't heard back from Public Storage.

Sandy police told KSL-TV that in looking back at Stone's case, there was nothing they could do because there were no security cameras near her storage unit. The case is listed as "inactive."

Stone said she purchased the Public Storage recommended insurance called Orange Door Insurance, and went to work itemizing and inventorying everything she had put in storage. A lengthy spreadsheet meticulously lays out every item, and what each item is worth if you were to buy it at the store.

The totally, Stone said, came out to more than $16,500. She said Sandy police told her that would have made the burglary a second-degree felony.

But the insurance company denied her claim.

"They said, 'We don't cover that,'" Stone recalled. She said they told her the insurance policy doesn't cover theft. "And a broken and replaced lock is not evidence of burglary. So, even though cops filed it as burglary, the insurance company decided it was theft, and I have not been refunded."

To this day, she's still fighting the denial and hopes to find a lawyer to help take the case to court. Stone wants to recoup some of the losses financially, even if she'll never get back the sentimental items.

"It's been two years and it's not over yet," she said. "I'm still thinking about this every single day."

Stone has PTSD, and described suffering an incredible amount of emotional distress from the ordeal. A few months after discovering the burglary, Stone did track down a few precious belongings in a pawn shop, including the custom guitar she made.

She saw an ad for one of her paintings, but by the time she arrived at the shop it had already been sold. Since then, she hasn't found any other belongings despite many searches at pawn shops in the Salt Lake Valley.

Stone, a KSL employee, saw Van Wagoner's story on Monday and wanted to share her experience.

"I had trusted this company with everything that I'd ever owned," she said. "I was in a place where I desperately needed it to be safe and it just all got taken from me, and then they shrugged about it."

KSL -TV has been trying every day since Monday to get ahold of Public Storage, including going to the business in person, calling, and emailing. Two different employees, one on-site and one on the phone, referred us to a person at the corporate office in California.

Three phone calls, two voicemails, and an email to that person have not been answered or returned as of Wednesday.

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