I was recently tasked to oversee the clear out of the past occupant of our office building. I did a walk-through to sort out what to keep before sending in the grunts to discard the junks. They vacated back around 2021, and left behind quit a bit. It all sat idle in a large store room for five long years.
As I examine the contents, I kept wondering if I might find something illegal, immoral, or infectious.



Worse yet, it could be something bio-hazardous.



DisappointinglyThankfully, nothing found so far fits into those categories, except for a few bottles of wine. Given the time constraint, I doubt I can give this mess the attention I wanted.

I did come upon a box with many packs of photos, and randomly picked one to look through.  Out of many group photos of what looked like coworkers at a function, one that stood out was a family of three with a young boy.



Right away, the gentleman caught my eye. He looks like a reporter of my local NBC affiliate named Robert Handa, who hosts a program that focuses on the Asian-American community on Saturday mornings. This is a more recent pic:



I reached out to him about the picture, and he confirmed it was him:



The name on the photo envelope has the name Ben Menor.  The previous tenant was a non-profit called 4C(Community Child Care Council).  I tried that phone number, but it was disconnected.  A casual search online showed that Mr. Menor was the board president of 4C. 

Other items of note was a 1969 yearbook from Gunn High School in Palo Alto, CA.



There were many messages in it addressed to "Benny".  Sure enough, I found Benny Menor’s senior portrait in it:



A high school yearbook, especially for the senior year with all the personal messages from fellow classmates, is a very special memento. Class of ‘69 would have been born in 1951-52. He would be well into his 70s by now. I hope I can track him down soon.

It's fascinating how encounters and connections are made sometimes.  If I was not a viewer of NBC and an early riser, Mr Handa’s face would not have caught my attention. I would have just tossed the pack back in with the rest and moved on. What started out as an office clear-out has turned into a little personal quest.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rawny,

Good for you!
It is a nice mission that you have taken on.

I’m in my early 50’s. I grew up in San Jose and he’s been on the air as long as I can remember. He shouldn’t be difficult to track down. May make an interesting human interest story.

Ben Menor is on FB. His “about” says Gunn High School. Last post he made was on May 17th so you could try messaging him through there.

Nice!

I had found some old medals from WWII that had the name of D. Foster written on the back.

Thought it would be cool to track him down and give them back.

The closest I got was possibly his grandson Thomas.

Pounded social media for years with no luck.

Someday...

Is this what is called "Mission creep"?

.38supersig, the medals you have reminded me about a story of a vet with a letter of a fallen enemy soldier to his sweetheart back home, finally returning that letter to her decades later. That was what inspired me to take this on. Of course, my situation is not nearly as epic in scale.

After I mentioned the yearbook and its owner to the reporter, he told me he knows of Mr. Menor casually though various Asian community functions. I will let Mr. Handa reach out and wait to see what happens.

I had never paid attention to those shows about storage unit auctions. Now I'm beginning to understand their appeal.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rawny,

This is one of those “were it not” stories. Were it not you who was tasked, were if(?) not you watched that tv program…

Real estate must be pretty slow if it took your company to getting around to addressing this space.

It is weird that so much personal stuff got left behind.

^^^ Indeed. There were more than a dozen packs of photos inside that box. Like most people would when cutting a deck of cards, I reached for the one in the middle. That one happens to have someone I recognized. I think I'll take some time to look through them all to see who else I can spot.



Commercial real estate has been stagnant in the Bay Area ever since 2020. The owner decided to remodel the entire floor three years ago, and it wasn't until now that we needed to clear it for the work crew to complete the project.

Ugh. I would not want to be a CRE office space owner right now looking for tenants. All the loans I’ve been doing lately are owner-user industrial spaces. Machine and fab shops and specialty retail of things that can not be bought online. Think food or hair/nail salons.

^^^ The entire floor used to be owned by Maxtor(they made hard drives back in the day) with one wide open space in the middle lined by offices on the perimeter. We are now using that space to create about forty more offices and meeting rooms of various sizes. The intend is to make it a virtual office type that offers flexible arrangements for smaller start-ups that cannot afford to commit to a large site with a long lease.

quote:

Originally posted by Rawny:
I kept wondering if I might find something illegal, immoral, or infectious.

Well hello! Looky what I found!



What is a Baccarat table doing here? This is getting interesting...