Forget needles in haystacks. Try finding three diamond rings and a bracelet in a Hall County landfill.

That’s what a five-member crew at the Candler Road landfill did for three hours after a woman called to say she’d accidentally thrown away $100,000 worth of jewelry, Channel 2 Action News reported.

The only clue Hall County’s solid waste Director Johnnie Vickers had was that the goods were in a “black bag.” That was tough to find in a space where 300 tons of trash arrive daily.

But, fortunately, the bag of precious items arrived about the time the frantic call came in, Vickers said.

“Timing is everything in this game to recover something,” Vickers told Channel 2.

They checked logs to see when the load likely came in and narrowed it from 300 tons to an area of nine tons of trash.

Had the call come in a few minutes later, the woman’s rings and bracelet likely would have been gone forever.

“We try to treat it just like if we had lost it,” Vickers said.

Vickers said he and his crew went the extra mile to make sure the woman’s treasure wasn’t anyone’s trash.

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