Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 | 10:31 a.m.
This town offers people new careers, new dreams, new ways to feed addictions.
And when they end up financially busted -- by misfortune, broken relationships, job loss or pathological self-destruction -- they discover that Las Vegas still isn't done with them. This town will try to wring every dollar from them, like some hungry vulture efficiently picking every last morsel off road kill.
This final, humiliating scene plays out at self-storage lots that hold the tailings of broken lives. If you fall behind in your storage rent payments because you've spent your last 20 bucks smoking crack or playing video crack, or you're in the throes of a nasty divorce -- or you've simply forgotten to pay your bill -- your stuff will be put up for auction.
And that's when the vultures move in, bidding $5 or $10 on the contents of your storage shed. They didn't put you in this bind, and they mean no ill will, but they are experts in capitalizing on your misfortune.
They don't much care why you can no longer afford to store your parents' cremated ashes or your children's drawings along with the soiled mattresses -- stuff you put in storage after you lost your apartment and began living out of your car or your buddy's place.
They're just hoping that inside those boxes or dresser drawers will be something of value. If the vultures weren't around, the stuff would end up in a Dumpster.
Some of these treasure hunters are full-time professionals; others are modern-day prospectors. They wield flashlights in one hand so they can peer into the tombs of wrecked lives, and they grip cash in the other.
Rosemarie Ricks is one of the pros at turning others' misfortune into personal profit.
For more than a decade, she has plied Las Vegas' storage lots, flying from one auction to the next, her adrenaline rushing every time the metal doors are rolled up.
The vultures aren't allowed to inspect the merchandise, so it's something of a crapshoot, deciding whether to bid for it. Does that television work? Will there really be wrenches and socket sets inside that Craftsman tool box? Will that heap of old shirts and jeans be moldy?
On this day, a half-dozen vultures squint inside a storage unit in the north end of town, and Ricks knows she'll have the advantage: Its contents are so bulky, most of the would-be bidders don't have the means to easily cart if off or take it to a swap meet to sell.
But Ricks has a couple of large trucks, a half-dozen employees and owns a second-hand store in Pahrump. So she bids $5 for the contents, and the others are just silent. Her poker face belies her delight. "I'll be able to sell that dryer for $60. The fridge, $80. The lawn mower, $50."
Her customers, she says, are grateful for the stuff that Ricks resells.
"And I'm making money," she says unabashedly. "Big time. Big time."
No one knows for sure what circumstances caused someone to stop paying the rent on his storage unit.
One woman, divorcing her husband, vindictively put his boat into a storage unit, and ignored the storage bills.
A doctor dispatched his secretary to a storage yard with the files of 2,000 patients -- and a few months later learned they were sold at auction, shredded and recycled as worthless paper because his secretary forgot to keep paying for the storage unit.
And sometimes the vultures end up burned by their own greed, like the time one of them bought boxes identified as cooking oil. But it was used cooking oil; some restaurant owner decided it was cheaper to pay a month's storage rent than to pay the disposal fees.
Some vultures believe most of the abandoned storage units were rented by people who lost their money on gambling or drugs and could no longer afford the monthly rent of $100 or $200.
Dante DeLeon, who works with Ricks, told me he unwittingly bought lots of drug paraphernalia over the years, and ended up with countless casino slot-club loyalty cards, stuffed in boxes by over-extended gamblers.
"It's real clear," he said, "why people don't pay their bills in this town. They succumb to the elements that are Vegas."
People leave Las Vegas with a lot less than they came with, he says.
Other cities have storage shed auctions, of course. But the vultures say no place is as fertile for picking as Las Vegas, where there is profit in loss.
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