Aug. 14 (UPI) -- A Baltimore bookstore that inherited a large mystery safe with its location put out a public call for safe-crackers to open the decades-old box, and the challenge was taken up by a man from Canada.
Rick Ammazzini, who drives for Winnipeg Transit in Manitoba, said he took up cracking safes as a hobby about 12 years ago and an online group of like-minded enthusiasts encouraged him to take up the challenge at Red Emma's Bookstore in Baltimore.
"As a joke they put it in the group, saying 'You should go and do this!' As a rebuttal I said, 'If you guys pay for it, I'll go do it,'" Ammazzini told CTV News.
A crowdfunding campaign quickly raised the $1,300 Ammazzini needed for travel.
Ammazzini said he found his first day of trying to crack the lock was more complicated than expected.
"Usually this lock should only take an hour or an hour and a half," he said. "I was met with some trouble, the lock wasn't performing the way it should have been."
He spoke to his online community after his first day of attempts and they offered some advice.
"The next day, with that knowledge, I was able to sort of discern what the lock was doing and what failures I was feeling," Ammazzini said.
He spent the full day at the bookstore until the safe door finally cracked open.
"I was touching the dial for 10 hours," he said. "My hands were actually black from the brass, I was touching it so long."
The store had promised that whoever opened the safe would get half of the contents if there was anything of value inside, but Ammazzini ended up finding only empty wooden drawers, some paper clips and an old paystub.
Ammazzini said he wasn't disappointed, he was in it for the experience.
"I know from experience that there really never is anything in there," he said. "The store owner was very excited because he doesn't have the letdowns that I've had, where I open up the safe and there's never anything in there. ... He thinks it's filled with gold and diamonds."
