ST. LOUIS — After a thief broke into his storage unit a St. Louis man thought he'd lost his life's collection of comic books, worth nearly $15,000.
It's a collection any comic book connoisseur would be proud of.
"Slowly started realizing that the comics I had been collecting since I was 15 years old were gone," said Martin Casas.
A collection worth tens of thousands of dollars, and a collection of priceless memories for Casas.
"I have comics from the month my daughter was born, from when I started a business, I have comics from vacations and when my wife and I got married I have that book," Casas said.
Then wham -- his whole collection was gone, thanks to a comic book crook stealing from storage units.
"I was freaking out," he said.
Casas' storage facility has security cameras, but unfortunately, his unit wasn't in their view.
But when the criminals walked into a comic book shop to sell the stolen collection, they didn't count on Casas being the owner.
"So, lo and behold, I get a call from Rally, one of my employees," Casas said. "And she said 'somebody brought a box of comics in, do you want to take a look at them?'"
As soon as he saw the word cap written on the box, he knew it was his.
"I was like, huh, that looks like my daughter's handwriting. Then I looked at the box, because I had put handwritten notes in there and I was like, oh those are there too," said Casas.
So he took a page straight out of the comics to catch the crook.
"The best line was I said 'how long have you had these books?', and she said 'not too long, I do storage lockers so we bought them from a storage locker,'" Casas said. "And I was like, I bet you do storage lockers, I know you do. Because you did mine."
Knowing he had cracked the case of his missing collection, he set up the meeting with the thieves with some extra support.
"Police came out of the basement and said 'put your hands on your head, you're under arrest.'"
The ordeal gave him one more story for his collection.
"If I had a superhero name in this instance, it would probably be Storage Unit Boy," Casas joked.
He said that after the woman was arrested, police told him they suspected her involvement with more than 20 other storage unit burglaries.