Mattress - and a million - to the dump
Posted: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 11:23 AM
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Tel Aviv, Israel
By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
TEL AVIV – She sounded subdued on the phone, sad even, and who wouldn’t be? All she had wanted was to give a nice surprise to her mother.
So Anat (not her real name), a Tel Aviv resident, threw out her mother’s ratty old mattress and bought her a lovely new one. After all, as people age, they need a firm mattress, not a lumpy old one.
But those lumps were not clumps of distorted wool or loose springs. They were dollar bills. A million’s worth.
Over the years, Anat’s mother had stashed away American dollars and Israeli shekels in her mattress, and now Anat had thrown away her life savings.
In a panic Anat rushed to the garbage dump but couldn’t find the mattress among the 2,500 tons of trash that arrives daily. She rode three garbage trucks to three different dumps and combed them feverishly, looking for her mother’s fortune.
She tried to keep it a secret, fearing others would comb the trash and find it first. But a municipal worker took a photo of her sifting through the smelly debris and sold it to a newspaper, even while he expressed doubt that there could really be a million dollars in one mattress.
But Anat’s panic was genuine enough. A radio station broadcast Anat’s disaster and pretty soon there were reports of concerned citizens storming the dumps trying to help her, or at least, help themselves to her money.
The garbage dump manager said his men were trying to help her, and added that she seemed desperate.
But newspapers quoted Anat as saying, "People have to take everything in proportion and thank God for the good and the bad."
