Sanitation crew helps woman find rings she accidentally threw away in North Carolina landfill

NEW HANOVER COUNTY, N.C. — Sanitation workers searched through layers of trash at a North Carolina landfill to help a woman find several of her rings after she accidentally threw them away.

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Pam Smith was recently cleaning when she realized several of the rings on her fingers were missing, WECT reported.

“I just was frantic that I couldn’t find my rings,” Smith said. “But, I knew in my heart I had thrown them, accidentally in the trash.”

The trash had been picked up moments before by sanitation workers. Husband Chuck Smith started chasing down the truck.

“By that time, they had done at least 25 more houses,” he said. “I was kind of panicked because that’s a lot of money.”

The driver for Select Recycling Waste Services saw the couple in pursuit and stopped the truck. Driver Elliott Holliday and partner Kendrick Grady knew they could not dump the trash on the side of the road, so they called the New Hanover County Landfill with a request.

“We called and told them the problem,” said Grady. “We just needed a flat piece of land to be able to unload the truck.”

They arrived and got more than that.

“Management wasn’t here, it was my call and about two seconds later, I told her to sit tight,” Kedar Brunson, a landfill specialist, told WECT. “I noticed this lady standing in front of my bulldozer praying, so I called my wife and we were praying with her saying ‘Lord, show this woman a favor.’”

A crew from the landfill helped dig through layers of trash for hours.

“It’s like we went through every bag. We went through, literally, the last bag before we found it,” Grady said. “It was truly a miracle.”

The Smiths sent a thank-you letter to the workers.

“The events of that day made for an eventful time in our lives and we will forever remember the compassionate and understanding way we were treated,” the Smiths wrote. “You have very professional staff and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

Cox Media Group