Copyright (c) 2008 Derek Clontz/4-Page Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
Talk about bad luck turning good – new hubby Tom Dixton dug through a landfill in a frantic search for his lost wedding ring and walked away with over $160,000 worth of treasures that included:
O A paper bag stuffed with $63,000 in cash.
O A rusty metal box containing 23 vintage gold coins worth $12,000.
O A one-of-a-kind Babe Ruth baseball card valued at $9,000.
O Two kilos of cocaine with a street value of $70,000.
O A perfectly preserved Fender Stratocaster guitar that belonged to rock great Jimi Hendrix and went missing after his death. Value: $15,000.
“I didn’t find my ring,” Dixton, 23, told me exclusively after his four-day search through an estimated 15 tons of garbage at a Los Angeles County, California, dump.
“But I still came out way ahead. Even my wife forgave me after I used some of the cash to replace my ring and buy her that new Toyota pickup she‘d had her eye on.“
The drama unfolded just two weeks after he tied the knot with his childhood sweetheart, Sandy Dixton, 22.
“I was changing the oil in my car when I heard the garbage truck coming down the street,“ he recalls. “I ran out to the curb with a couple of bags in the nick of time.”
While washing oil and grease off his hands a few minutes later, he realized his ring was gone.
“I checked under the car and all through the garage and couldn’t find it anywhere,” he says. “It was pretty clear it slipped off my finger when I ran out to the street with the garbage.”
Dixton phoned the county sanitation department and found out where the truck that picked up his trash had made its dump. Armed with a pair of leather gloves, he drove to the landfill and started digging.
“It really stunk out there,” he says. “There were times when the smell took my breath away and it was everything I could do to keep from giving up. And rats – there were a million of them. Not to mention the maggots.”
Dixton says he sifted through garbage for six hours before he found some junk mail with his name on it.
“I knew I was getting close,” he explains. “About 15 minutes later, I found $20 beside a big paper bag that was soaking wet and smelled like litter box. I looked inside and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was full of cash.
“At that point, wild horses couldn’t have dragged me out of that dump.”
In fact, the landfill closed and he had to go home. But he was back the next day as soon as it opened, digging to beat the band.
Over the next three days he found the cocaine, gold coins, and a collection of over 2,000 old baseball cards, including the rare Babe Ruth. He also stumbled on Hendrix’s signed and numbered guitar, which was sealed in a watertight case. The “axe“ went missing after his death in 1970 and has been sought by collectors ever since.
Independent appraisers valued the booty at $169,000 plus.
Dixton turned the cocaine and cash over to cops, who destroyed the dope but gave back the money after it went unclaimed.
“I’m no fan of cocaine anyway,” he says with a laugh. “But I am a fan of money – and I thank God I got to keep it.”
