Single mom loses kids' childhood memories to rats in Placerville storage unit
PLACERVILLE - A woman was disgusted with what she found crawling through her storage unit. She now wants others to know the risks with rats -- before they rent.
There's a fence between Katie Pinkerton and her old storage unit now and she's quite OK with that.
"The urine and the feces, almost everything in my storage unit was chewed," said Pinkerton. "I mean just disgusted, You don't think when you rent storage you're going to have a problem with rats."
Pictures show feces and multiple dead rats inside her belongings at her old storage unit. That's what her kids found going through their things while she was at work.
"We lifted up a few boxes, me and my sisters and when we tried to clear more stuff out there was rat poop all over the place and there were a couple more dead rats," said her son Michael.
Katie reached out to Placerville Self Storage -- was told to fill out a claims form and says she then received an email saying she'd get a $500 reimbursement. But that never came.
CBS13 reached out to the company and a representative sent an email saying according to policy they only discuss issues with tenants but Brian Watson did write:
"We do have monthly pest control service. Tenants can put their own pest control as they wish in their unit and we do provide bait as courtesy as well for their unit(s)"
Aside from the money, Pinkerton says what hurts most as a single mom is that she lost most of her children's childhood memories including their homemade artwork.
"That really hurt, because those are things that I can never get back," said Pinkerton.