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This article appeared in today's Philadelphia Inquirer (Do you think one of us could have helped?):
Searching for lost jewels - and a miracle
A tale of one family vs. 15 tons of garbage.
By Art Carey
Inquirer Staff Writer
In the span of a week, the Myers family went from sorrow to despair to hope to one last preposterous plan. Along the way, they offered copious ecumenical prayers to any divine intercessor, including St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things.
What they prayed for was a miracle.
What they were searching for was the proverbial needle in a haystack - family jewels buried somewhere in the tons of trash at the Chester County landfill.
"One in a million, is what I told them," says Frank Dabney, who knows a thing or two about trash. "I told them, 'You only got one shot, and it's a long shot - a real long shot.' "
The story, based on interviews with all the participants and a review of a videotape, begins on Tuesday, Sept. 25, when George Campbell Myers, 84, the family patriarch, died in his sleep just a day before he and his wife, Susan, would have celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary.
The following Saturday, his funeral took place at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Whitemarsh. After the graveside ceremony, his wife, an 83-year-old diabetic who uses a wheelchair, began feeling woozy. She was given a shot of insulin. When her condition failed to improve, her worried children took her to Paoli Hospital, within range of her home in Downingtown.
In the emergency room, her daughter, Laurie, 52, in from Brussels, removed her mother's jewelry - a pearl bracelet Susan's husband had given her on her 80th birthday, her engagement ring, a 50th anniversary ring passed down by her mother, and another guard ring. All the rings sparkled with emeralds and diamonds. Their intrinsic value ran into the tens of thousands of dollars. Their sentimental value: priceless.
Laurie, who works for an e-commerce consulting company in Belgium, handed the jewelry to her brother Greg, 45, of Thorndale, who had been caring for his parents for the last four years. Greg put the jewelry into a latex hospital glove and knotted it tightly. He remembers putting the glove into his pocket. What happened after that is a mystery. Did he pull the glove out and set it on a table or counter? Did it fall out? Did he accidentally toss it into the trash?
"I just don't remember," Greg says. "I was tired, preoccupied and emotionally spent. The room was full of commotion and distractions."
The next day, Laurie called Greg, who owns a design company. "Where are Mom's rings?" Greg went blank. "I had no idea where they were. It was pretty scary."
Laurie and her other brothers Jeff and Cam, along with Cam's fiancée, Kimberly Larson, all in from California, descended on Greg's house and tore it apart, searching high and low. No luck.
That afternoon, they returned to Paoli Hospital to visit Susan. They asked the hospital staff whether anyone had found a glove full of jewelry. Again, no luck. They searched the parking lot, peered into all the outside trash receptacles.
Luckily, Frank Dabney happened to be on duty. He wears a tag that identifies him as an "environmental services assistant." One of his jobs is "pulling trash."
"I know my garbage," says Dabney, 47, who lives in Germantown.
Dabney had bad news. If the glove containing the jewels had been thrown into a hospital trash container, the chances of finding it were infinitesimal. The trash receptacles are emptied every four hours, and dumped into a huge compactor in back of the hospital. Once a week, the container is hauled to the Lanchester Landfill in Honey Brook. The next trip to the landfill was a few days away.
Meanwhile, Susan was asking, more and more insistently, "Where are my rings?"
Stymied, the Myers gang did the only sensible thing: They hatched a plan that was sheer madness. They decided to follow the truck to the landfill and search the trash, bag by bag - all 15 tons of it. Planning ahead, they stuck a discarded blue mattress into the compactor to serve as a marker. At the landfill, everything in front of it, they would ignore; everything behind it, they would inspect.
For $500, they hired Dabney as a consultant and co-conspirator. "I was ready to help, because I could relate to the family piece," Dabney says. "My mom and dad have been married for years."
Later that day, the Myers gang went to Kmart to, in Jeff's words, "get hazmatted out." They bought gardening tools to sort through the trash and plastic suits, gloves and wading boots to protect themselves from contamination.
On Monday, Jeff, 49, who owns a semiconducter manufacturing equipment company in Santa Barbara, Calif., contacted Waste Management, the company that hauls the hospital's trash. Officials there were sympathetic and offered to pick up the container the next day, a day early.
On Tuesday, after working until midnight, Dabney was back at the hospital at 4:50 a.m. to meet the truck. He then followed it to the landfill. The Myers gang - Laurie, Cam, Jeff, Cam's fiancée, Kimberly Larson, and a cousin from Florida, Andy Smith - were there at 7 a.m., ready to dig in. Helpfully, the truck driver dumped the trash gradually, spreading it out instead of piling it into a heap.
In the heat and the stench, surrounded by disgorging trash trucks and belching bulldozers, animal carcasses and fetid offal, they began ripping open bag after bag. There were hundreds of them, and each contained at least five other bags, and each of them was filled with lots of latex gloves.
On and on it went. Hour after hour. They were operating on sheer faith. There was no assurance the glove was even there. Sealed up in plastic suits, they were saturated with sweat. Jeff, who had bought a black sauna suit, looked like an overcooked lobster. Periodically, they would take a break by flopping onto an old couch. By about 2:30, Jeff and Cam were ready to call it quits.
Then Cam poked open a bag and found an EKG tape from the ER, dated the day Susan was brought in. "I felt like we were kind of hot," Dabney says. "So I stayed with it."
"I kept telling myself, 'Don't give up five minutes before the miracle.' "
Minutes later, Dabney spied a bag that "looked like familiar trash." He dropped to his knees, preparing to open it. "I prayed to God, 'Don't let this day be for no good.' "
Dabney tore the bag open and a tightly knotted glove "just popped up."
Dabney grabbed it. "I could feel the pearls. I shook it and could hear the rings."
Not one to raise false hopes, Dabney stood up and announced, "I'm not sure, but I think I got something here."
Jeff and Cam sped over.
"I busted it open," Dabney recalls, "and the pearls came out."
Then Cam picked up the glove and began kneading the fingers.
"I've got one ring!" he said.
"I've got two rings!"
Then: "I've got three rings!"
Dabney was mobbed like a player whose hit wins the last game of the World Series. There were hugs and high-fives, whoops of glee and jigs of joy.
The truckers and heavy equipment operators who had been watching the spectacle all day stopped their machines and climbed down from their cabs to offer congratulations.
"They thought we were crazy," Jeff says. "They told us that people come there all the time looking for big stuff, and they never find it. They were amazed."
"Obviously, the likelihood of finding something that small in 15 tons of trash is pretty small," said Teresa Devine, the landfill's compliance officer. "I'd say they're real dedicated, to hang in there for seven hours looking for it. Because, in the end, you're combing through trash - and, let's face it, that's not the most pleasant thing."
Greg Myers, who missed the landfill frolic because of a birthday vacation with his girlfriend, rewarded Dabney by doubling his compensation to $1,000.
"Without Frank, there's no way in hell we would have found it," Cam says. "All these small coincidences kept adding up, so that they almost outnumbered the huge odds against us."
"I believe it was my dad, between heaven and earth, watching over his family, giving us something to work on rather than grieving," Jeff says. "Without him, this miracle never would have happened."
That evening, one week after her husband's death, the rings were returned to their rightful place, the fingers of Susan Myers. She was glad to have her family jewels back, these beloved mementos of her deeply missed mate. No one told her then where they had been. She had no idea how precious they were, how much love had gone into finding them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact staff writer Art Carey at 610-701-7623 or [email protected].
Searching for lost jewels - and a miracle
A tale of one family vs. 15 tons of garbage.
By Art Carey
Inquirer Staff Writer
In the span of a week, the Myers family went from sorrow to despair to hope to one last preposterous plan. Along the way, they offered copious ecumenical prayers to any divine intercessor, including St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things.
What they prayed for was a miracle.
What they were searching for was the proverbial needle in a haystack - family jewels buried somewhere in the tons of trash at the Chester County landfill.
"One in a million, is what I told them," says Frank Dabney, who knows a thing or two about trash. "I told them, 'You only got one shot, and it's a long shot - a real long shot.' "
The story, based on interviews with all the participants and a review of a videotape, begins on Tuesday, Sept. 25, when George Campbell Myers, 84, the family patriarch, died in his sleep just a day before he and his wife, Susan, would have celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary.
The following Saturday, his funeral took place at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Whitemarsh. After the graveside ceremony, his wife, an 83-year-old diabetic who uses a wheelchair, began feeling woozy. She was given a shot of insulin. When her condition failed to improve, her worried children took her to Paoli Hospital, within range of her home in Downingtown.
In the emergency room, her daughter, Laurie, 52, in from Brussels, removed her mother's jewelry - a pearl bracelet Susan's husband had given her on her 80th birthday, her engagement ring, a 50th anniversary ring passed down by her mother, and another guard ring. All the rings sparkled with emeralds and diamonds. Their intrinsic value ran into the tens of thousands of dollars. Their sentimental value: priceless.
Laurie, who works for an e-commerce consulting company in Belgium, handed the jewelry to her brother Greg, 45, of Thorndale, who had been caring for his parents for the last four years. Greg put the jewelry into a latex hospital glove and knotted it tightly. He remembers putting the glove into his pocket. What happened after that is a mystery. Did he pull the glove out and set it on a table or counter? Did it fall out? Did he accidentally toss it into the trash?
"I just don't remember," Greg says. "I was tired, preoccupied and emotionally spent. The room was full of commotion and distractions."
The next day, Laurie called Greg, who owns a design company. "Where are Mom's rings?" Greg went blank. "I had no idea where they were. It was pretty scary."
Laurie and her other brothers Jeff and Cam, along with Cam's fiancée, Kimberly Larson, all in from California, descended on Greg's house and tore it apart, searching high and low. No luck.
That afternoon, they returned to Paoli Hospital to visit Susan. They asked the hospital staff whether anyone had found a glove full of jewelry. Again, no luck. They searched the parking lot, peered into all the outside trash receptacles.
Luckily, Frank Dabney happened to be on duty. He wears a tag that identifies him as an "environmental services assistant." One of his jobs is "pulling trash."
"I know my garbage," says Dabney, 47, who lives in Germantown.
Dabney had bad news. If the glove containing the jewels had been thrown into a hospital trash container, the chances of finding it were infinitesimal. The trash receptacles are emptied every four hours, and dumped into a huge compactor in back of the hospital. Once a week, the container is hauled to the Lanchester Landfill in Honey Brook. The next trip to the landfill was a few days away.
Meanwhile, Susan was asking, more and more insistently, "Where are my rings?"
Stymied, the Myers gang did the only sensible thing: They hatched a plan that was sheer madness. They decided to follow the truck to the landfill and search the trash, bag by bag - all 15 tons of it. Planning ahead, they stuck a discarded blue mattress into the compactor to serve as a marker. At the landfill, everything in front of it, they would ignore; everything behind it, they would inspect.
For $500, they hired Dabney as a consultant and co-conspirator. "I was ready to help, because I could relate to the family piece," Dabney says. "My mom and dad have been married for years."
Later that day, the Myers gang went to Kmart to, in Jeff's words, "get hazmatted out." They bought gardening tools to sort through the trash and plastic suits, gloves and wading boots to protect themselves from contamination.
On Monday, Jeff, 49, who owns a semiconducter manufacturing equipment company in Santa Barbara, Calif., contacted Waste Management, the company that hauls the hospital's trash. Officials there were sympathetic and offered to pick up the container the next day, a day early.
On Tuesday, after working until midnight, Dabney was back at the hospital at 4:50 a.m. to meet the truck. He then followed it to the landfill. The Myers gang - Laurie, Cam, Jeff, Cam's fiancée, Kimberly Larson, and a cousin from Florida, Andy Smith - were there at 7 a.m., ready to dig in. Helpfully, the truck driver dumped the trash gradually, spreading it out instead of piling it into a heap.
In the heat and the stench, surrounded by disgorging trash trucks and belching bulldozers, animal carcasses and fetid offal, they began ripping open bag after bag. There were hundreds of them, and each contained at least five other bags, and each of them was filled with lots of latex gloves.
On and on it went. Hour after hour. They were operating on sheer faith. There was no assurance the glove was even there. Sealed up in plastic suits, they were saturated with sweat. Jeff, who had bought a black sauna suit, looked like an overcooked lobster. Periodically, they would take a break by flopping onto an old couch. By about 2:30, Jeff and Cam were ready to call it quits.
Then Cam poked open a bag and found an EKG tape from the ER, dated the day Susan was brought in. "I felt like we were kind of hot," Dabney says. "So I stayed with it."
"I kept telling myself, 'Don't give up five minutes before the miracle.' "
Minutes later, Dabney spied a bag that "looked like familiar trash." He dropped to his knees, preparing to open it. "I prayed to God, 'Don't let this day be for no good.' "
Dabney tore the bag open and a tightly knotted glove "just popped up."
Dabney grabbed it. "I could feel the pearls. I shook it and could hear the rings."
Not one to raise false hopes, Dabney stood up and announced, "I'm not sure, but I think I got something here."
Jeff and Cam sped over.
"I busted it open," Dabney recalls, "and the pearls came out."
Then Cam picked up the glove and began kneading the fingers.
"I've got one ring!" he said.
"I've got two rings!"
Then: "I've got three rings!"
Dabney was mobbed like a player whose hit wins the last game of the World Series. There were hugs and high-fives, whoops of glee and jigs of joy.
The truckers and heavy equipment operators who had been watching the spectacle all day stopped their machines and climbed down from their cabs to offer congratulations.
"They thought we were crazy," Jeff says. "They told us that people come there all the time looking for big stuff, and they never find it. They were amazed."
"Obviously, the likelihood of finding something that small in 15 tons of trash is pretty small," said Teresa Devine, the landfill's compliance officer. "I'd say they're real dedicated, to hang in there for seven hours looking for it. Because, in the end, you're combing through trash - and, let's face it, that's not the most pleasant thing."
Greg Myers, who missed the landfill frolic because of a birthday vacation with his girlfriend, rewarded Dabney by doubling his compensation to $1,000.
"Without Frank, there's no way in hell we would have found it," Cam says. "All these small coincidences kept adding up, so that they almost outnumbered the huge odds against us."
"I believe it was my dad, between heaven and earth, watching over his family, giving us something to work on rather than grieving," Jeff says. "Without him, this miracle never would have happened."
That evening, one week after her husband's death, the rings were returned to their rightful place, the fingers of Susan Myers. She was glad to have her family jewels back, these beloved mementos of her deeply missed mate. No one told her then where they had been. She had no idea how precious they were, how much love had gone into finding them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact staff writer Art Carey at 610-701-7623 or [email protected].
