Cautionary Tale: Woman Locked in Storage Unit for 63 Days

Next time you are diving into your storage unit late at night, you might want to tell someone you are there so you don't end up trapped in your unit for 2 months like this Alabama woman. Wanda Hudson, 44, was trapped in her unit for 63 days  after a manager noticed that it was unlocked and partially open after hours and locked it. Hudson, who survived for two months on juice and canned foods, successfully sued the Alabama storage facility and was awarded $100,000, less than the $10 million she was seeking. Hudson was vague about why she was in the storage unit so late on November 7, and denied she heard the metal door close. Parkway's attorney, Burt Taylor, suggested she was sleeping and, furthermore, that she had been living in the unit. She denied Taylor's supposition. Hudson had lost her home because of foreclosure shortly before this incident took place. The company argued that during those two months that Hudson claims to have been locked in the unit, customers renting nearby units never heard her trying to get help. Hudson claimed that she did yell out multiple times when she heard other renters, but no one ever responded. When she was discovered on January 9, 2002, she weighed 85 pounds, having weighed 150 when she entered it. She was admitted to a local hospital immediately and treated for "advanced starvation, unusual to find in medical circumstances in America today," said Dr. William Asher, who studied her case at the hospital. Moral of the story: take your cell phone into a storage unit, let the managers know you are there and don’t go to sleep inside of it. Here are some security tips to make sure you don't get locked in to your storage unit.