Woman mistakenly junks $1 million mattress

An Israeli woman mistakenly threw out a mattress she says had almost $1 million inside, setting off a frantic search through tons of garbage at a number of landfill sites on Wednesday, AP reported.

The woman sought to surprise her elderly mother with a new mattress Monday and in the process surprised herself even more by forgetting she had hidden her life savings inside the old mattress. She remembered this minute detail the next day.

"I woke up in the morning screaming, when it hit me what happened," the Tel Aviv woman, who asked not to be identified, told AP.

I would be screaming too.

She went to look for the mattress, but it had already been hauled away by garbage collectors, she said. Searches at three different landfill sites turned up nothing, AP reported.

Losing that money totally sucks, but looking for it really stinks--literally.

She said the money was in U.S. dollars and Israeli shekels, but she refused to say how she acquired such a large sum. "It was all my money in the world," she said.

Then how could she forget it? I mean, how does one forget $1 million?

Yitzhak Borba, the dump manager, told Army Radio that his staff was helping the woman, saying she appeared "totally desperate." In other words, she was freaking out.

He said the mattress was hard to find among the 2,500 tons of garbage that arrives at the site every day. Security was increased at the site to keep would-be treasure hunters away.

The woman said the money had been stashed in a mattress because she had had "traumatic experiences with banks" in the past. She would not elaborate, AP reported.

Well, she's now having traumatic experiences with mattresses and landfills.

In the U.S., investigators have found bodies in landfills in a matter of days several months after the bodies have been dumped. They follow the trail from the killers to the dumpsters to the trucks that picked up the trash at those dumpsters to their routes and where they dumped their contents on the days in question. If they can do this months after the fact, couldn't this woman and whoever is helping her find a freaking mattress (which does not decompose like bodies do) the day after it was taken?

I'm thinking either trash collecting is a bit disorganized over there or someone thought the mattress looked good enough to sleep on. Little does that person know he/she is a millionaire.

I do hope she finds her money; otherwise, she could potentially wake up screaming every day for the rest of her life--that is, if she gets to sleep at all, as I'm betting $1 million is not all she's losing these days.

It goes to show that a new mattress does not automatically mean better sleep, if you ask me.

Sources: The Associated Press, NPR News, My Twisted Mind
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