Thaindian News

Shanghai, May 11 (IANS) A Chinese woman, whose 130,000 yuan ($20,000) worth of diamonds were thrown away by mistake, employed sanitary workers to go through mountains of garbage to seek them out.

Six sanitary workers toiled in the afternoon heat in Songjiang district and finally found the jewels, Shanghai Daily reported.

The owner - named Li - put the jewels in three glass jars which she placed in a tea box inside her refrigerator, before going out to work. However, her mother who did not know about the diamonds, noticed that the tea was past its sell-by date and asked their domestic helper to throw it out with garbage.

When Li returned home, she was stunned to find the tea box missing.

Discovering that the garbage had been taken to a dump, she contacted the local sanitation company.

An official with the company called back the workers who had collected the garbage from Li’s residential complex.

Zhu Yangqing, a 58-year-old worker, said he could remember exactly where the garbage containing Li’s lost diamonds was deposited.

The workers searched using their bare hands. Following two hours of sorting through five tonnes of rubbish, the team found the box and its glittering contents.

A team member asked Li’s mother, who was waiting at the scene, to have a look at the box he had found.

Worry turned to relief and joy when she saw it was the box that had been thrown away, and that the diamonds were safe inside.

Li paid the workers 100 yuan each as a reward for finding the jewels.