PURPLE HEART MEDAL FOUND IN LOCKER

He took a long look at the intel generated by a computer program he had developed with ChatGPT. It listed storage units that had been abandoned by people whose names had appeared at some point in the news. One was connected to a politician in Piscataway, N.J. Another locker had belonged to a minor celebrity: "Rapper known as ‘Ackquille Pollard' or ‘Bobby Shmurda,'" the listing read.

Michael's mother, Anna Haskell, was in her study, reading The Wall Street Journal. "It all started in middle school," Ms. Haskell, an investor, said. "Michael would go to book fairs, where he discovered he could buy books by the bag and resell them. Then he started researching Legos that were going out of production, and he started buying those up, reselling them as they got more valuable. Then he saw ‘Storage Wars.'"

"I don't know what he could be one day, but what he's doing is almost like distressed investing, buying distressed assets," she added. "Maybe he'll go into the investment path."

Ms. Haskell considered what her son might be gaining from his locker dives, aside from money.

About a year ago, one night after Michael cleared the locker of its valuable works of art, he searched the name Andrew Crispo online and learned about a harrowing crime that transfixed New York in the 1980s.

As Michael learned in his online sleuthing, the case became known as the Death Mask Murder. Mr. LeGeros was arrested and charged with the killing. Mr. Crispo denied involvement and was never charged, though the murder weapon, a .22-caliber rifle, was found hidden in his gallery.

Mr. Crispo later served prison time for tax evasion and for threatening to kidnap a lawyer's 4-year-old child. He died destitute in 2024 in a Brooklyn nursing facility, causing his storage unit to go delinquent.

The auction house Bonhams handled the artworks that Michael found in the Crispo locker. With his mother's help, he invested the proceeds from the nearly $50,000 sale into the S&P 500. There may be more windfall yet. Still unsold from the collection is a Yoruban ceremonial staff, which will soon go to auction. Bonhams has set the bidding at $4,500.

But around the time that Crispo's grim life story left Michael feeling shaky about humanity, he came upon something quite different in a storage unit he had unlocked in Union City, N.J. Its contents seemed routine at first — tool boxes, hammer holsters, saws, drills, some Spanish-language comic books. But deep within the clutter, in a tattered box, Michael found a Purple Heart.

After clearing the locker, he went on eBay and found a lively market for Purple Hearts. One could easily fetch $300. But he didn't list it.

"I felt I should return it," Michael said. "I didn't have much to go on because I didn't have an owner's name for this unit. But there was a faded address on one package."

The address brought him to a home with a rusted white fence in an immigrant enclave of Union City. A pair of dust-caked Timberland boots sat by the entrance. No one answered Michael's knocks at the door. No one answered his calls after he pulled a phone number through public records. Then he sent a letter. He is still waiting to hear back.

He keeps the Purple Heart in a drawer. "Selling it would be disrespectful to a life, to someone who fought for something, even if I don't know who they are," Michael said. "I'll never sell it."

To read the complete article, see:
A New Jersey Teen Finds Treasure, and More, in Abandoned Storage Units (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/style/new-jersey-teen-storage-units.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web