A lottery ticket worth 1 million euros was found in the trash in Bari, Italy, after its panicked owner asked city cleaning workers to help her find it, the waste management company told Italian media .
The ticket was "miraculously still intact" when waste collectors searched through the mountains of trash in their vehicle, said Roberto Nicola Toscano, director of SANB in the Puglia region of southern Italy.
Toscano explained that the woman went to her neighborhood store on Sunday to check her ticket after the draw. But the machine told her it was "unpayable," because small stores only pay out small amounts.
Believing she had a losing ticket, she threw the ticket in the store's trash can and left. After returning home, a family member told her that her usual numbers were the winning numbers.
The family ran to the store, but discovered that the ticket had already been thrown in the trash and that the garbage truck had also passed by.
However, luck smiled on the woman a second time: They managed to find the garbage truck in time, stop it, and explain what had happened.
Because of the danger posed by the mountain of potentially hazardous waste, employees took it to the premises of a company specially equipped to conduct investigations. They searched through the trash for a day and found many tickets. Among them was the lucky one, in perfect condition.
When Toscano told his wife that he had been found, she burst into tears with emotion. "I would have hugged her, but we were talking on the phone," the manager added, laughing. ©LAPSI.al
