A family from the Scottish county of West Dunbartonshire, UK, decided to visit their 80-year-old grandmother and help her clean up. While the old woman was busy with her own affairs, the relatives sorted out all the kitchen cabinets in a businesslike way and threw out what they did not like from them.
However, they did not receive gratitude from the old woman, but on the contrary, they learned a lot about themselves, because it turned out that, together with the old tin cans, they sent all the savings of an elderly British woman to the landfill.
The pensioner folded the money into bundles and hid inside four tins of granulated Bistro sauce, five thousand pounds each – a total of 20 thousand pounds. Having learned about their shameful fiasco and received scolding from their grandmother, the whole family set off to catch up with the garbage bags that were already in the Dalmoak Waste Recycling Center.
At the recycling plant, they were met by two partners – Kenny McAdam and Tony Scanlon. Relatives told them about what had happened, and the men immediately set to work. They did not immediately remember where they put the last bags of garbage, but they began to sort through them anyway.
“They stood and watched what we were doing. They must have thought they would never get them back,” said Kenny McAdam.
But after two hours of painstaking searching, Tony found the first jar, and she pointed the way to the rest. Granny’s fortune was saved without loss.
“I found one of the cans and then Kenny came across the other four. It’s an amazing, wonderful feeling. When I think about it, I think about my tiny grandmother and how I would feel if I was in such a situation,” Tonny said.
It turned out that if the family had hesitated a little, then the money could have been lost forever – the batch of garbage in which they ended up was already being prepared for shipment to the landfill.
According to McAdam, the old woman’s daughter did not stop crying during the entire two hours of searching, and when she finally received the cans of cash back from him, she said: “You just saved my life.” Granny must have been furious when she found out what her family did with the money.
Recycling center workers admitted that they often have to help people in such situations: they pulled out wedding dresses and even jewelry that accidentally fell into garbage bags.
