Storage-Space Scavengers : Auctions: Bidders vie for abandoned goods. The discoveries can be rewarding--or repulsive.

Just a moment before the auction, bidders had begun to shine flashlight beams into a 5-by-7-foot rental storage room, looking at the outside of cardboard boxes for clues to their contents.

It was not until top bidder Ed Zaharoff had loaded the containers into his van that he noticed small, jagged holes in the bottoms of his new boxed belongings. And it was not until he started driving that he heard the screeches.

For $400, Zaharoff had become the proud owner of four boxes of rat families and the rags they called home.

Zaharoff is a storage-space scavenger, one of hundreds who travel from auction to auction, their hunting grounds the storage rooms abandoned by owners for at least 60 days. The scavengers are willing to bid up to thousands of dollars, hoping to find treasures in someone else’s leavings.

“People think they can get rich in this business,” said Zaharoff, a six-year veteran of the blind auctions. “I’m still working at Ralphs. I haven’t found a gold mine.”

What Zaharoff did find last week, for $2,300 at an auction of rent delinquent storage rooms in Northridge, were three badly decayed human bodies. While police continue to try to determine the identities of the victims and how they ended up in two steamer trunks and a box, Zaharoff and the other regulars continue to scavenge, hoping for luckier breaks.

Most of the time, they find boxes filled with odds and ends of people’s lives: tattered clothing and scratchy dishes, reams of papers and household knickknacks. It’s the sort of recyclable junk that might fetch a few dollars at a swap meet. Enough, the treasure hunters hope, to at least reimburse them for their bid.

But sometimes, they do find treasures, such as the crayon box among a room’s contents bought by Randi Cram of Whittier for $400 that hid a $4,000 Rolex watch.

The storage space auction game requires careful strategy. Magic Marker labels can be deceptive; crystal can be a woman’s name or it can be the fancy label given to regular kitchen drinking glasses packed in newspaper. Boxes with factory brand names cannot be counted on to contain those items; gamblers all have memories of sealed boxes that promised Sony TVs or Apple computers, but turned out to be empty.

“Something can look real good and it ends up being the stuff of a bagman or something,” said Zaharoff, who was refunded the $2,300 he paid when he ended up with the three bodies. “Sometimes people don’t know the value of something and they put it in storage. Happens all the time, that’s what we hope for.”

Myths of the trade--both horrible and grand--abound. Someone “back East” found a severed finger in a bag full of clothing.

Someone “up North” paid $500 for a room and discovered a priceless painting.

The storage business owners have their own stories about the things people leave behind. Mary Vincent of Personal Storage Garages in North Hollywood recalls that one night a worker heard a pained howl coming from a storeroom. Someone had locked a dog inside.

Los Angeles police have tales about uses for the nearly ideal hiding spaces too. They regularly seek warrants to search storage rooms and occasionally find what they are seeking: drug labs, pornography, counterfeit money and other contraband, said Detective Tom Broad.

Most of the regular storage room gamblers--the ones who daily scour the papers for auction listings, subscribe to resellers’ newsletters and carry flashlights in their pockets and padlocks on their belts--say they are looking only to come out a little bit ahead. From time to time, antiques dealers acknowledge, they do.

“I don’t think they’re going to find a Faberge egg, but I do think the odds are pretty good that they’ll find something worth $100,” said Terry Kovel, co-author of “Kovels’ Antiques and Collectibles Price List.” “But they have to be smart enough to recognize it, that’s the key, and then know how to sell it.”

Antiques dealers derisively call the scavengers “pickers,” because they are willing to sift through the take. The bidders prefer to call themselves resellers, treasure hunters or gamblers.

And they have their own hierarchy. They refer to neophyte pickers as “newbies” and hope to drive them out of the game.

See someone who doesn’t look familiar? Mutter loudly about a worthless room’s good-looking haul, run the bidding high, and then dump it on the newbie, leaving the newcomer with a roomful of junk.

Ralph Hickey Jr. of Canoga Park has only been at the blind auction game for about six months. He works nights as a printer and saves many of his days for bidding, hauling and reselling storage room contents.

At 9:30 one recent morning, he was ready to bid on the one unit up for grabs at a U-Haul self-storage facility in Whittier. The last payment on the 10-by-10-foot room had been made in May, the storage manager said, and attempts to contact the room’s renter had been unsuccessful.

Hickey and about six other treasure hunters gathered around for the auctioneer’s usual pre-bidding speech. Cash only. Personal photos and documents must be returned. No touching the room’s contents. No going inside before the bidding. No refunds. No guarantees.

When the manager opened the door, the gamblers gathered around the door, training their lights on the booty: an old sewing machine, a rusty 10-speed bicycle, a mattress, and the inevitable, but mysterious, boxes. In hopes that the crates would contain items worthy of a swap meet, Hickey made the high bid, $350.

Peeking inside one, he spotted gift wrapping. The others would remain unopened until he got home, another tenet of the scavenging game.

“No matter what you have, somebody will give you something for it, even if it’s a nickel or a quarter,” Hickey said. “It’s only worth what somebody will pay for it.”