Oregon man reunited with lost life savings, thanks to workers at a recycling facility

After accidentally throwing away a shoebox containing his life savings, a man in Ashland, Oregon, crossed his fingers and hoped that workers at a recycling facility would somehow manage to discover it among the tons of cardboard, glass, and aluminum.

The man tossed the shoebox containing $23,000 into his recycling bin on Thursday morning, and realized his mistake later in the day. By that time, his recycling had already been dumped into a truck headed for California. He made a few calls and discovered that his recycling was now at a Recology facility in the Humboldt County city of Samoa. "We take quite a bit of material every day, so the odds of finding that are not much better than a needle in a haystack," Linda Wise, general manger of the Samoa Resource Recovery Center, told The Press Democrat.

Most of the bags were sorted Thursday night, but a few had been left for the morning crew. Wise told the employees to keep an eye out for the box, and one worker managed to spot it before it went to the landfill. Most of the money was still inside, with only $320 lost along the way. The man was thrilled by the discovery, and Wise said "everyone who was on the sorting line was beaming."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up