Seattle couple tries to rebuild after losing everything in U-Haul theft

If you lost every thing you owned, would your insurance replace it?

A Seattle couple who had all of their belongings stolen from their rented U-Haul truck is learning the hard way their coverage wasn’t nearly enough.

Longtime Seattle musician Rafael Anton Irisarri and his wife Rita had loaded the moving truck up with everything they owned last month for a planned move to New York. But on May 26 – the day of their departure – they discovered the truck had been stolen from in front of their Capitol Hill home.

The truck was ultimately recovered, but everything was gone: $50,000 worth of music gear, along with all of their possessions.

“Imagine if your house had caught fire and everything disappeared, just poof. That’s the feeling. I still have a hard time just waking up and realizing it,” says Irisarri.

The couple had renters insurance, but Irisarri would soon learn it’s coming up far short. The policy was capped at $30,000. In all, he now estimates the value of all their goods, not counting the musical equipment, at over $70,000.

“It’s crazy how fast things add up, things you don’t think about like plates, and pots and pans to very small things that by themselves don’t cost much,” he says. “You don’t buy it [insurance] thinking you’re going lose the entire contents of your home. You’re pretty much thinking they might break in and take a television or a couple of computers.”

The couple has spent the past two weeks trying to come up with a comprehensive list of everything that was taken. But Irisarri says the claims adjuster assigned to the case by State Farm is demanding receipts or proof of every single item to be reimbursed.

“Who keeps receipts of every single thing they’ve purchased over the course of their lifetime?” he says. “You might keep receipts for big ticket items, but you wouldn’t keep receipts for every single entire thing I’ve bought over the last fifteen years.”

Even worse, those receipts they did have were stolen along with everything else, leaving them with no proof of ownership of any of their goods.

U-Haul has been no help, he says. While the couple bought the optional “Safemove” coverage, it only protects against damage or loss from collision, fire, windstorm and overturn of the rental truck.

Irisarri accuses State Farm of doing all it can to avoid paying his claim by making the process as difficult as possible.

“You not only have the pain of losing everything that you own, but then you have to remember every single thing and go through the whole emotional turmoil, and then you have the claims adjuster saying you have to have all this documentation,” he says. “You know it’s pretty well documented that we got screwed already, I mean there’s video of the robbery, for crying out loud.”

A spokesman for State Farm says the company cannot discuss Irisarri’s claim specifically because of client privacy policies. But Brad Hilliard says the company is committed to finding resolution to every claim and while documentation helps in that process, not having it doesn’t preclude reimbursement.

“We’re going to try and find ways to meet a resolution because we understand that. We understand you’re not going to save every single receipt over several years,” says Hilliard.

Irisarri’s case is far from unique. A Minnesota man moving to the area had his U-Haul stolen from the parking lot of the Bellevue Hilton just 15 minutes after parking at the hotel on May 24, the same weekend as the Irisarri’s theft. A nurse moving to her dream job in Alaska had her U-Haul and all of her belongings stolen from an Everett motel in March.

The thefts are important reminders for all of us. Insurance experts say at the very least, it’s critical to create a video inventory of all your belongings. And Hilliard reminds people to keep the video and any other documentation in a separate fire-proof safe or holder.

Irissari and his wife have since moved to New York, where they are trying to rebuild their lives with only the clothes they had set aside for the cross-country drive. In the meantime, he continues scouring Craigslist and eBay in hopes some of his belongings show up and he can get a lead on the thieves. He has posted a complete list of his stolen musical equipment on his website.

“We lost every thing and every memory we ever had. I lost all the masters and backup drives from 15 years of my musical career. It’s devastating,” Irissari says. “It’s brutal. It’s been really tough the past few weeks.”