Storage Wars owes its popularity to its recurring cast of characters - treasure hunters,
bargain seekers, and auctioneers from different walks of life who were all colorful and memorable
in their own way. Here's what they've all been up to since Storage Wars ended.
Presiding over the family-like collective of locker bidders every week on Storage Wars
were Dan and Laura Dotson, a married team of auctioneers
who oversaw the actual bidding and purchasing of those storage units'
mysterious contents. They fascinated viewers with their old-fashioned, rapid-fire auctioneer
method of speaking and firm but gentle ways in which they'd quell infighting among the bidders.
You may remember how Laura Dotson coined an all-time great reality TV catchphrase:
"Don't forget to pay the lady!"
After the last locker was auctioned off on the last episode in 2019,
the Dotsons returned full-time to the private, non-televised auction circuit where they'd worked
for years - but this time capitalizing on their status as two of the most famous people associated
with their line of work. Dan and Laura Dotson operate American Auctioneers, a for-hire service
that handles every aspect of the process of an auction. The couple also runs StorageAuctions.net,
an online repository for self-storage facility auctions going on across the United States.
In September 2020, TMZ reported that the Dotsons' 22-year-old son, Garrett, was shot in a drive-by
shooting outside an Airbnb in Arizona. He was airlifted to a Las Vegas hospital to treat severe
internal bleeding. He survived the encounter but dealt with a long and difficult recovery.
Reality shows need villains, a person that audiences love to hate. The villain
on Storage Wars was surely pawn shop operator and auction guy Dave Hester,
who with much aggression and hostility attempted to outfox his co-stars in their bids
on storage units. Known as "The Mogul", he also generated a catchphrase which
he'd yell out during auctions and plaster on his vehicle and clothing:
"YUUUP!"
According to USA Today, in December 2012, Hester was fired from the show. He sued network A&E and
Original Productions for $750,000, citing wrongful termination. Hester alleged that Storage Wars was
heavily staged in order to guarantee quality TV. In his suit, he said that producers would, quote,
"salt" the storage lockers with remarkable finds for buyers to artificially discover,
such as a classic car or rare and valuable newspapers.
Hester and the defendants settled the suit by 2014, and he returned to the show.
In June 2020, he made headlines for losing a lawsuit against Public Storage.
Hester purchased the insides of an abandoned locker for
$11,800, only for the company to realize later that the rightful owner was actually
up to date on their rent. That led Public Storage to void the sale and Hester to sue.
Outside of the courtroom, Hester started an auctioneering-for-hire company,
and he also serves as a consultant in the auction industry.
Everybody on Storage Wars had a nickname, and for Darrell Sheets it was "The Gambler."
He'd pay big money for lockers and often score big, like the time he paid $3,600 for
the contents of one storage site and found artwork inside worth $300,000.
Sheets remained with Storage Wars for the entirety of its 12-season run. After the show ended,
he chose a quiet life of semi-retirement and a focus on his personal life and health.
In a later deleted Instagram post, Sheets revealed that he suffered a small heart
attack and complications in the form of a lung infection in early 2019:
"I've been very sick for 3 months and two nights ago I had a mild heart attack,
found out I have congestive heart failure and a severe issue going on with my lungs."
After he recovered, he moved to Lake Havasu City,
a California-Arizona border resort town, where he officially retired.
He has since continued to enjoy his life and spend time with his family and loved ones.
Brandon Sheets was a part of Storage Wars from the beginning,
although his role changed and evolved over time, creating a compelling character arc. At first,
the man they'd call "The Sidebet" was a supporting player, an assistant and tagalong for his father
Darrell, the older and more experienced storage locker bidder. Then he broke out on his own,
going into business for himself and finding himself in bidding wars with his own flesh
and blood. But after nine seasons, he left Storage Wars - not of his own volition, however.
In a tweet from a since-deleted account, Sheets said that he was,
quote, "no longer affiliated with Storage Wars," explaining that while his father would remain
on the series, his involvement had been terminated because of budgetary issues.
Months later, he fired back at A&E for attempting to continue a professional relationship, tweeting:
"Funny how @AETV fired me for lack of budget but they still
have their people follow me on Social media and want me to do free stuff."
Sheets relocated to Arizona with his family and now works as a UPS delivery man.
Barry Weiss was known as "The Collector" for his tendency to bring home large auction hauls.
Older, more seasoned, and far more relaxed than his often high-strung costars, Weiss became a
hit with viewers and a breakout figure - so much so that he left the series that made him famous
after four seasons. The destination - his very own spinoff shows. In 2014, Weiss starred on Barry'd
Treasure, traveling around the U.S. in search of rare finds. It lasted just eight episodes,
while Storage Wars: Barry Strikes Back, a 2015 compilation show in which Weiss and
former co-star Kenny Crossley presented unseen footage from Storage Wars, made ten episodes.
Unfortunately, Weiss was involved in a serious motorcycle accident in 2019. According to TMZ,
he was struck by a car mid-ride and spent two months in a hospital, some of that in
the ICU and some of it recovering from back and femur surgeries. Upon his recuperation,
he landed a gig as the "global brand ambassador" for California's Sherwood Valley casino.
Opposites may attract, as proven by Brandi Passante and Jarrod Schulz - she was a careful
bidder, he an impulsive one, all on display in 12 seasons of Storage Wars and its spinoff,
Brandi & Jarrod: Married to the Job.
Viewers assumed that Passante and Schulz were a long-married couple.
However, they never officially tied the knot, and in the summer of 2020,
the pair confirmed that they'd broken up back in 2018. By that point, Schulz had started dating
Rochel Beckman, a bartender at The Rush Bar & Grill, a restaurant he purchased in 2019.
Passante is the primary caregiver to son Cameron and daughter Peyton.
Schulz, meanwhile, seems to have taken custody of the couple's clothing line, Outlaw Apparel.
According to Yelp!, the couple's second-hand store, Now and Then,
shut down due to the ongoing pandemic. Passante reported in June 2020 that
she'd endured a two-week battle with COVID-19, and has since recovered.
Before his time on Storage Wars, the amiable Kenny Crossley worked for the New Orleans Sheriff's
Department and managed storage facilities in Los Angeles. That job got him involved with locker
auctions and connected him with Barry Weiss. Crossley was seen occasionally in the early years
of Storage Wars before he became a major buyer and main cast member for the last three seasons of the
show, always finding great pleasure in discovering hidden gems in delinquent storage lockers.
"We gotta downplay it.”
“We gotta downplay it.”
“This unit sucks!"
These days, Crossley has been quite busy. According to his website,
he launched a line of clothing bearing his indelible catchphrase,
and he also runs Jackie's Famous Pralines, a New Orleans-based nut-and-candy company.
He is also a budding YouTube star, with Kenny Do It Adventures - where he talks
about anything from current events to his thoughts regarding his favorite junk food items.
Before he was Storage Wars' self-proclaimed "King of Palmdale"
and regular from season five onward, Ivy Calvin was a non-televised auction hunter,
spending years traveling around the U.S. looking for gems to resell at his thrift shop,
Grandma's Attic. According to the Los Angeles Times, before that, he was a professional athlete,
playing in the Arena Football League, and fighting in the mixed martial arts circuit. Auctioning and
thrifting was at one time only a supplement to his job as a high school football coach.
As of 2021 and according to its Facebook page, Grandma's Attic is still up and running
in Palmdale, although it's shifted to more of an online venture because of COVID-19-related
restrictions on nonessential store openings. A largely private person, he spends a lot of time
on social media promoting the more illustrious, individual items on offer at his shop.
Mary Padian made an unlikely jump from the spinoff Storage Wars: Texas
to Storage Wars proper during its fifth season. In both iterations, her fellow residents of the
locker auction subculture called her "The Junkster" because she wasn't afraid to get
a little dirty to go for something valuable - even if it meant rooting around in dumpsters.
As of 2019, Padian has kept up with this line of work, operating Mary's Finds.
Here, she focuses on interior design enhancers,
offering, quote, "an eclectic mix of handmade, vintage, & one-of-a-kind home goods".
She doesn't just stick to old stuff from Texas, however.
Padian has frequently worked with Ubuntu Life, an organization that benefits special
needs children in Kenya by selling handmade and traditional-style bracelets and bags.
Rene Nezhoda, a veteran German-American bidder and junk dealer, first appeared in season five
along with his wife and business partner, Casey. They'd already been surveying locker
auctions for years in order to find attractive items to stock Bargain Hunters Thrift Store,
their second-hand store in Poway, near San Diego. The shop remains a bustling business,
according to Yelp!. The Nezhodas generate interest by marketing the store themselves with a YouTube
channel. More than 90,000 subscribers watch their videos, which include live auctions,
features about collection acquisitions, and unboxings.
The couple has also pursued a unique angle in the world of locker content
auctions - buying lots owned by celebrities. In November 2018, they purchased Farrah
Fawcett's storage lockers for $3,500, with lackluster results. Rene told People:
"It wasn't what we wanted. It wasn't
this mega-explosion unit. But we still found some stuff,"
On top of that, according to The Blast, Fawcett's nephew sued, alleging that a rep of the actress'
estate didn't have the authorization to sell the contents of her locker.
Undeterred, they bought what NBA star Lamar Odom left behind in a unit,
including game-worn jerseys, shoes, and mementos of his marriage to Khloe Kardashian. In 2020, the
Nezhodas met up with comic actor Jamie Kennedy and bought film memorabilia right out of his garage.
Emily Wears joined the cast in season ten. Born into a family of auctioneers, Wears proved to
be a prodigy, working for her father's Iowa company at age 10 and beginning her training
at 17. She won a slew of titles as a teenager before moving onto reality TV, which before
Storage Wars included stints on another Thom Beers auction series Money Barn, and American Idol.
As of late, Wears has focused on her personal life and entrepreneurship. In May 2017, she married
rodeo cowboy Cody Kroul, and in November of 2019, she gave birth to a daughter named Millie Rose.
On Instagram, Wears describes herself as a "Cowboy's Wife", and also runs a
small business selling leather goods and Western-style boots called Western Wears.
When Justin Bryant joined the cast of Storage Wars for its final stretch of episodes, he was just
22 years old, making him the youngest bidder and buyer in the show's history. Storage Wars had been
airing for so long by that point that it's what directly inspired Bryant to give buying storage
lockers a shot. Not only was he immediately successful enough to make it onto the cast of TV's
top storage locker reality show, but he used his proceeds to help his mother buy a house - and got
so busy that he hired his brother to assist him. Not bad for a guy everybody called "The Rookie."
According to Bryant's Instagram account, he married a nursing student named Evelyn Leon,
and he has a daughter named Kaliah. He also maintains a YouTube channel
called ThatBoiiBrazzy, where he occasionally posts videos where he pranks his wife and child.
Edwina Registre and Shana Dahan joined the show in 2017.
Known as "The Vegas Ladies", they were two of the show's youngest junk hunters and one
of the few two-person teams who weren't also a couple. They were actually close, real-life
friends, having met in high school during an orchestra trip, according to their cast bio.
These days, Registre and Dahan still make treasure discovery content. They've got a
YouTube channel called ThriftersAnonymous, where they mainly post videos of themselves hitting up
second-hand stores for vintage clothes. As of 2021, ThriftersAnonymous has more than
40,000 subscribers. The pair also used YouTube to launch a self-produced, straight-out-of-cable
reality TV show. This Is Who I Am finds Registre and Dahan selecting a Las Vegas-area
individual in need of a clothing makeover, raiding their closet to gauge their personal style,
and then taking them on a revitalizing shopping spree with the final price coming in under $100.
Storage Wars: Texas was the first and most successful of the Storage Wars spinoffs,
running for four years and nearly 90 episodes. Among the most prominently featured
treasure seekers on the show were "The Rangers," Ricky Smith and his nephew and
business partner Bubba Smith. Ricky grew up in an auction family, developing his skills
as a teenager in his parents' auction house, and decades later starting an extensive
wholesale and resell operation based out of a well-stocked warehouse in Lampasas, Texas.
Bubba, meanwhile, advised on matters of electronics and art. They'd been hitting
up storage lockers for nearly 40 years by the time they were cast on Storage Wars: Texas.
Today, the Smiths still operate their business, Lampasas Warehouse.
It's a part of Smith Auction Services, their 30-year-old business that facilitates
auctions for the Smiths and its clients looking to unload a lot of merchandise.
Throughout the latter seasons of Storage Wars: Texas, Jenny Grumbles,
known as "The Dazzler", served as the show's resident furniture expert.
She sought out good and workable pieces that she could restore or rework and then
resell for a substantial markup at Uptown Country Home, her Dallas furniture boutique.
Grumbles was also a furniture designer, and in the near-decade since Storage Wars:
Texas ended production, she has leaned heavily into that pursuit. According to her Twitter bio,
she's no longer the owner of Uptown Country Home,
and instead is putting lots of work into Dallas-based J Grumbles Studio. After
getting sober and giving birth to a baby boy named Thompson in 2014, Grumbles applied her
art degree from Southern Methodist University and opened a gallery to show off her paintings.
Her styles of choice include abstract art, portraiture, landscapes, and still life.
While the process was a full-time gig for a majority of those seen on Storage Wars:
Texas, the locker game was only a side hustle for Moe Prigoff. Granted,
for a decade prior to his appearances on the reality show, he ran a small,
high-end antique and interiors store called River Regency, which specialized in art and
furniture. But that wasn't his main line of income. He was a successful podiatrist,
too, running a small surgical clinic in Dallas. According to his Facebook page,
he was also affiliated with the International Foot and Ankle Foundation for Education and Research.
Lately, Prigoff has kept on with both antiquing and medicine. River Regency was
still in operation as of late 2020, while North Dallas Podiatry Center remains active as well.
Lesa Lewis came to Storage Wars: Texas at a professional crossroads. When the show began,
she'd been buying storage unit contents at auctions for years - selling the majority of
it all online. Storage Wars: Texas depicted Lewis starting a retail operation for the first time,
a thrift store called Again and Again, alongside her employee and
de facto buying partner Jerry Simpson. He clearly resented Lewis for frequently
giving into temptation and keeping some of her best storage scores for herself.
"Every time that I find something that I want to keep,
Jerry always wants me to put it in the display case."
After starring as one of the main locker-picking teams in the first season,
their appearances diminished in the second and third years of the series,
with producers focusing on latter cast additions Jenny Grumbles
and Mary Padian. According to Online Storage Auction, Lewis said she and Simpson vacated
their main roles because of a salary dispute, which was resolved after filming had resumed.
Thom Beers has worked in television for a long time. In the early 90s,
he was the supervising producer in charge of the environmentalist cartoon
Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Serving as the executive producer of Storage Wars,
Beers also provided the show's deep-voiced and perpetually amused narration,
a service he offered to many other reality shows - including Deadliest Catch, Monster Garage,
Pitchmen, Ax Men, and Ice Road Truckers, in addition to the various Storage Wars spin-offs.
These days, Beers remains busy with Deadliest Catch and its spinoff, After the Catch. Beers
and his wife, Leslie, have a son named Max, and he also owns a large estate called Casa Tres Cervezas
- the last word being Spanish for "beers" - which he rents out for luxury vacation experiences.
Mark Balelo injected some youthful swagger to Storage Wars when he popped up in seasons two,
three, and four of the series. Nicknamed "Rico Suavé" for his
preference of dressing up in very nice clothes for routine, low-key storage locker auctions,
Balelo came prepared to those cash-only events with a big wad of bills.
Watchers of Storage Wars were likely unaware of the darker aspects of his personal life.
His off-screen troubles continued into February 2013, when Simi Valley Police arrested Balelo for
possession of methamphetamine while under the influence of the drug, according to Hollywood
Life. After years of drug problems and jail time, Balelo committed suicide. He was 40 years old.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.