It was almost a 1 million euro mistake.

A winning lottery ticket was pulled from the trash in Italy after the winner called in garbage workers to help find it, the waste management company told AFP.

The instant win ticket was “miraculously still in one piece” after workers searched through mounds of trash on their truck, said Roberto Nicola Toscano, the administrator of the SANB company in Italy’s southern Puglia region.

Toscano said the woman, who remains anonymous, went on Sunday to check her ticket at her local shop after the drawing, but the machine showed it was “non-payable.”

That was because smaller retailers can only redeem small wins, but the woman did not realise she had won the 1 million euro jackpot.

“The winner always played the same numbers, as they were associated with a loved one,” Toscano said.

When she got home from the store, a family member told her that her regular numbers had won.

They ran back to the shop, but the ticket had already been thrown away and the trash had been collected.

She called Toscano.

“We reconstructed the journey of the ticket, without much hope of finding it, as it had already been picked up by a garbage truck,” Toscano told AFP.

They managed to identify the right truck and stop it, he said.

Because of the risk from potentially dangerous material in the waste, the truck was taken to a specialist company equipped to carry out the search.

Workers searched for more than a day and found various tickets and ticket stubs.

“Amongst them was the stub we were looking for, which was miraculously still in one piece,” Toscano told AFP Tuesday.

When he told the winner they had found it, “she cried with emotion”, he said.

“I would have hugged her, but we were on the phone.”

SANB, based in Bitonto outside Bari, is a public agency, so Toscano said he had the woman sign a promise to “cover all of the additional costs” incurred.

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