Have you ever inherited a peculiar bequest—an item valued highly on the sentimental scale by its owner and worth a substantial amount of money? Did a story unfold within your family as you wondered in your sorrow what to do with it?
Inheritances often arrive encumbered with the human intricacies of debt, love, grief and kinship. And some inheritances are weighed down with real-life theater and make for great T.V. Enter “Strange Inheritance,” stage left.
“Strange Inheritance” is like the second generation of “Storage Wars.” Host Jamie Colby says, “We don’t just tell you about the stuff people inherit, but we tell you about these great American families.” Colby says after 26 episodes in season one and roaring into the second season, she’s learned to have an “appreciation that I have my family; I learned it’s important to tell your family what you want to do with your collection. People agonize over what to do with things left to them.”
Tonight’s episode features Chantilly’s Air and Space Museum as Colby meets with the museum staff to learn about cameras used in outer space. Museum curator Jennifer Levasseur explains the evolution of space photography, technology that inspired the first weather satellites. But this episode only begins in the museum; it ends with a Los Angeles attorney dying prematurely in a hospital bed.
“I predict this episode is the most compelling and tenderhearted one for the season. It’s a love story.” Colby says.
Rick Cigel and Shelley Lokeitz married as he lay dying in his hospital bed. Next, Cigel auctioned off part of his outer space collection: A camera that was used by astronaut Gordon Cooper in the 1960s, or so Cigel thought. The camera was never used by Cooper; in fact, in Cigel’s final days, he discovered the camera valued much higher historically and monetarily. Cigel sold the camera for Lokeitz.
Her inheritance changed everything.
The original owner of the camera and how the inheritance changed Lokeitz’s life will be revealed tonight at 9 p.m. on the Fox Business Network.
