When Josh Stevenson of Boyd, Texas was about 16, he accompanied his girlfriend's father, a weekend treasure hunter, to a self-storage facility in Arlington. After a customer fails to make monthly payments for a certain time, abandoning the unit, management can take possession of the contents and sell them to the highest bidder, a process that has gained popularity in recent years because of reality TV shows like Storage Wars.
Stevenson's companion offered a couple of hundred dollars -- the top bid -- for one of the units. Hidden among furniture, clothing and boxes of household goods lay an old briefcase. "Here," the buyer said, "you can have this."
Stevenson opened the satchel and looked through the stack of yellowing military records. They belonged to a World War II pilot named Ronald Aultman, a Purple Heart recipient who flew a B-26 twin-engine bomber in support of the Normandy invasion. Stevenson recently located the family of the airman and returned the World War II records, personal possessions, and a man's "whole life from 1942-46."
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My thanks to Ruth Stephens for telling me about this story.
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