She initially thought I had found the tapes, that I had brought her good news. When I told her otherwise, Ginnie Ellis cried.
She does a lot of that these days. She wants the videotapes back so badly. She is willing to pay for them, to search, she said, any trash can or landfill where someone might have tossed them.
A reader sent me a copy of Ellis’ letter in the Highlands Ranch Herald in which she laid out her problem. She thought I could help, too.
It is a brief letter, one that begins: “My Baby’s VCR tapes are gone. Can you help me?”
It goes back months. She had hounded her ex-husband for the key to his storage unit, the one, it turned out, even he couldn’t get into because of overdue rent.
Inside the unit were the antiques and boxes of assorted personal items, including the videotapes, that he got in the divorce.
They mostly contain events of her son, Steven’s, first year: video of the day he was born, when her mother and father first saw him, video of his first birthday. Others contain snippets of his life leading up to his first day of school.
Steven, her only child, is 20 years old and away at college in Iowa. She is 58 and acknowledges that being alone might have stirred emotions and triggered her attempt to retrieve the videotapes.
“My dad is on them, and he is dead now, the only video I ever had of him,” she said, again weeping miserably. “My mom is 84, and on the video is much younger. It just breaks my heart . . .”
To get those tapes, she told her ex-husband she would pay the back rent on his storage unit.
She went to West Parker Self Storage to arrange to pay the $500 her ex-husband thought he owed. The owner informed her it was $2,700 but that it didn’t matter anymore: He had sold it all.
What didn’t sell, he said, went into the trash.
He first told her he did not know who bought the items. He later said he knew but would not bother them.
“He finally told me everything is gone, to get over it and stop bothering him,” Ellis said.
The owner of West Parker Self Storage did not return several calls seeking comment.
“I am making a plea to anyone that may have knowledge of the sale of any antiques and personal items,” she wrote in the Herald. “The tapes are worthless to anyone except as memories to my family, my son and me. I am willing to pay to get them back and am willing to keep everything anonymous, if need be.
“If the tapes have been disposed of, please let me know where so I can go see if I can find them.”
Yes, Ellis said, she would dig through any landfill. Her sister, she said, has volunteered to help.
Her real hope, she said, is that someone shoved them into a corner, will hear of her and remember.
“My ex asked me to forgive him,” she said, “and I have forgiven him. I only want my memories back. I want nothing more.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
