VIDEO: Sanitation Team Digs Through Four Tons of Trash to Find Purple Heart Documents

A team of sanitation workers in Missouri dug through four tons of trash last Wednesday to help a woman who mistakenly threw her husband’s Purple Heart documents in the recycle bin.

Reneka Taylor, who panicked when she realized she accidentally disposed of her husband’s papers, contacted the sanitation department in Raymore, Missouri, to assist in finding them, KMBC reported.

“He’s an Iraqi war vet, and he fought for our country, and [for] me to have put a piece of him in the shredder, not knowing that I put it in the shredder; it was devastating,” Taylor said.

Chuck Byrd, president of the waste management company Jim’s Disposal Service, said he received a call about a resident and sprung into action.

A video showed piles of recycled waste inside the facility, where Byrd said the chances of recovering the document were like “finding a needle in a haystack.”

But the crew defeated the odds, recovering the documents after searching a few hours. The crew was able to track down the truck that made the pickup, and then seven sanitation workers sifted through four tons of recyclable waste to find the 24-inch tube containing the information.

Taylor was “ecstatic” when she heard her husband’s documents had been found in one piece.

“Everything was still intact,” she said. “There was nothing missing, and I was just really ecstatic.”

Byrd said he is glad everything worked out in the end for both Taylor and his sanitation company.

“It’s a happy ending for her; it’s a happy ending for us,” Byrd said.