A haredi tourist from New York, Tovi Schwartz, experienced a surprising resolution this week to an incident that began at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida.
A tallit and tefillin he had with him were lost, and after a swift and complex search operation, they were found in an airport trash bin.
The incident occurred on Sunday, shortly before Schwartz's scheduled flight back to New York. After noticing the items were missing, he first contacted airport staff, and then the local sheriff's office.
Security footage indicated that the items had been mistakenly discarded by cleaning staff and had already been moved to the airport's waste facility.
Schwartz contacted Rabbi Eli Eckstein, the airport rabbi and Chabad emissary in Dania Beach, who acted quickly with the cleaning and waste teams to stop the truck before the trash reached the processing facility.
"When they contacted me, I reached out to airport officials and the garbage company and arranged to stop the truck," said Rabbi Eli Eckstein to VIN News. "With the help of the volunteers we were able to find the tallit and tefillin before they were lost."
In the end, a bag containing the tallit and tefillin was found intact hours before it was due to enter the final processing facility.