What happened after New York woman accidentally threw wallet filled with cash and jewelry into trash?

Have you ever accidentally thrown away your wallet filled with cash, car keys, and a precious piece of family jewellery?

That's exactly what happened to Jill, a mother from Staten Island, New York. After a mix-up, while unloading bags from their car, she accidentally threw out her wallet containing cash, credit cards, car keys, and precious family heirloom earrings.

She had in her wallet not just money and credit cards, but also her car keys and a pair of gold earrings from the 1940s, which held emotional value for her family. "I wore the earrings for my wedding; my daughter wore them for her high school graduation and prom," said Jill.

She realised her mistake after the Department of Sanitation truck had collected their trash. New York City's sanitation department helped her find her valuables that ended up in the city's daily collection of 24 million pounds of trash.

The station staff managed to identify the truck that had collected Jill’s trash and stopped it from being shipped out. Jill was given 90 minutes to search through the garbage. After about half an hour, she found her wallet, intact but smelling like garbage.

“I was in shock,” she said. “Everything was intact. [But] it smelled like a pile of garbage. I treated myself to a nice new Anne Klein wallet. It’s bright yellow. Now, I’m all into these bright colours, because god forbid if something should ever happen again.”

She is not alone who frantically approached the sanitation department as Joshua Goodman, Deputy Commissioner, Public Affairs & Customer Experience for the NYC Department of Sanitation, said that his department receives similar frantic calls a couple of times each month. Such incidents are “a good reminder that every item in the trash used to belong to someone," Goodman said.

“Everyone has their emergency contact. They should also have their emergency trash buddy,” Goodman quipped.

Jill praised the sanitation workers who helped her find her lost valuables. “They were so wonderful,” she said. “They do deal with garbage, but they have big hearts. When you think the city doesn’t care, sometimes, deep down, it does.”