Soldier returns from Iraq, finds all he owned was sold

Springfield, Mo. - After serving a year in Iraq, Army Reserve Spec. Patrick Rogalin came home and found that everything he had put in a storage locker - essentially everything he owned - had been sold.

Several payments for the locker had bounced because someone emptied his checking account while he was gone.

"It's really insulting, after all I went through over there serving my country, to come back and have to deal with this," Rogalin said.

Rogalin, 20, said he put his belongings into a Public Storage unit near St. Louis before shipping out and set up automatic payments with the company. But while he was in Iraq, he said, someone accessed his checking account and cleaned it out.

After learning of the problem from his bank, Rogalin opened a different account and resumed making payments to Public Storage.

"When I got back I called Public Storage to find out the status of my account and they told me the contents of my storage container had been auctioned off in June because the bill hadn't been paid," he said.

Rogalin said Public Storage never told him his account was in trouble or that everything he owned was going to be sold.
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