Garbage Collectors Band Together To Find $25,000 Cash A Family Accidentally Threw Out While Cleaning

Aug 24, 2021

Imagine losing track of your most prized possessions. Sounds pretty rough, right? Now, imagine throwing away something so important that it could be life-changing if you are never able to find it or get it back. For one family in Oberlin, Ohio, their nightmare unfortunately came true in mid-summer 2021 when they accidentally threw out $25,000.

There’s a saying that no good deed goes unpunished, and perhaps this saying has some truth behind it, according to a story about this family from Oberlin. The family from Lorain County had teamed up to do a nice gesture and help clean out their grandmother’s house. Their day did not go as planned, as someone wasn’t paying close enough attention, and accidentally chucked an envelope full of money into the trash. The family instantly went into full panic mode and figured out what they could do next to hopefully retrieve the giant wad of cash. 

Fortunately, the family was able to come up with a solution relatively quickly and called their local garbage collectors to see if they would be able to help out and hopefully come to their rescue. Time was of the essence as the family’s local waste collection agency had to work extremely fast and diligently to find the truck and trash bag that had the envelope full of money. 

Luckily, the agency was full of incredible workers that were passionate about helping their customers and moved incredibly quickly to search for the family’s money. Read on to find out more about how a group of garbage collectors teamed up to help this family find $25,000.

Accidentally Throwing The Money Away

According to ABC News 5, Republic Services is a solid waste collection agency in Oberlin that dumps about 4,500 tons of trash into its landfill six days a week. “Trucks coming in from every direction, Downtown Cleveland all the way to Vermilion, dumping garbage,” operations supervisor Gary Capan said. 

The waste collection agency has gotten used to a typical routine, but received a surprising call from one of their customers on one summer day in 2021. The customer had lost something incredibly important, and it had been thrown out in the trash. “It turned out to be $25,000,” Capan revealed. While this unnamed family in Oberlin had tried to do something helpful for their grandmother, the day’s events did not go as planned. 

What started as a nice gesture from the family turned into a catastrophe. Capan explained: “They were cleaning out their house for their grandmother and they cleaned out the refrigerator, threw out all the garbage, grabbed all the freezer stuff and put it in a bag, and then the grandma was like, ‘Hey, there’s an envelope with $25,000 in there, don’t lose that,’ and she’s like, ‘Grandma, I already lost that, it’s in the garbage!”

Republic Services immediately got to work to help the family and search for the missing money. “Our team was trying to track down the driver and find out exactly what his location was and if he made it to the landfill yet,” Capan said. He explained that once trash hits the landfill, it would be too late to recover the money.

Their Incredible Teamwork

“What happens when they get to the landfill is, they will come in, they’ll drop off their load of garbage, the bulldozers will immediately start smoothing it out, pushing it into the hill, dropping dirt on it and start covering up the process of the landfill,” Capan said. “And we do that in a nonstop process. If it got dropped there, there’s no finding it anymore.”

Luckily, the truck driver had not yet gotten to the landfill yet, so Capan was able to make arrangements to have the driver drop off the six-ton load at a nearby recycling center in Oberlin, as per ABC News 5. After all of the trash was dumped out of the truck, the treasure hunt was on as Capan and his team worked feverishly to find the family’s money.

“I told the girls, if it’s in there, we’ll find it for you, because they were pretty upset,” Dan Schoewe said. He works as the operations manager at the recycling center, and was one of the 10 workers who volunteered to search for the money. According to ABC News 5, Schoewe was also the one who spotted the trash bag that contained the envelope full of money.

“Couldn’t believe it took 10 minutes and actually, I said, ‘Man, it looks just like that,’ pulled it off, opened it up and there was the package inside with the money,” Schoewe said. He explained that the family was “so happy, they were tearing up.” Capan chimed in, and said, “What a great story. And we’re just glad to help.”

What did you think about this story of a waste collection agency’s teamwork to help find a family’s envelope full of cash? Let us know, and be sure to pass this on to your loved ones, too.