We asked members of local sanitation companies and public works departments to tell us about the strangest things they’ve seen in the back of their trucks.
“We once found a World War II compass. The iridium in the compass’s hands set off our radioactive alarms. We gave the piece to the county. The compass is actually worth something like eight-thousand dollars and is now on display at West Point. We’ve also found live kittens in a box. We put them up for adoption.”
—Mike Ruggiero, Manager, Yonkers Environmental Services
“My eleven-year-old son actually found a taxidermic eight-point deer and white Spanish ram that are now hanging on his wall.”
—Anthony Prestamo, General Manager, Somers Sanitation Inc.
“We found a whole car somehow placed in a dumpster.”
—Michelle Marinos, Manager, AMEC Carting LLC, Norwalk, CT (services Westchester County)
“Last summer, a guy lost his dentures, and to find them we spent four to five hours searching through a forty-yard recycling container that held paper recycling from four different routes. We eventually found it, which is pretty amazing.”
—Keith Weber, Heavy Mechanical Equipment Operator, Harrison DPW
“We once found an entire sailboat in a twenty-yard container.”
—Dan Barry, President, D. Barry Rubbish, Peekskill
“We’ve seen everything from boxes of silicon breast implants to an allegedly authentic autographed picture of Marilyn Monroe. We kept one implant and used it as a paper weight. We returned the photo to the owner.”
—Mark Weiss, Co-Owner, 1-800-GOTJUNK, White Plains
“People will really throw anything in a dumpster. We’ve found a lot of brand-new electronics and power tools still in the packaging: a cordless power gun, a portable circular saw, a brand-new cordless phone. We see a lot of adult paraphernalia and drug equipment including needles, pipes, and clips. I find it really sad, though, when I see boxes of old family pictures, things that can’t be replaced with money. It’s sad to think people would ever throw that kind of stuff out.”
—Jim Brown, Owner, Red Mills Carting, Mahopac
