What happens when you accidentally throw away jewelry, cash—even lottery tickets—in NYC

It’s a New York nightmare: What if you accidentally throw out your precious jewelry, or money, or car keys with the city’s 24 million pounds of trash collected each day?

Last Friday, Jill, a Staten Island mother-of-three, was distraught when she realized she’d just tossed all three. Her wallet — which contained not only cash and credit cards but also car keys and a pair of gold earrings from the 1940s — had ended up in the trash after a mix-up while her daughter unloaded bags from their car.

She realized this just after a Department of Sanitation garbage truck had emptied her family’s trash cans and rolled away.

Everything else would be a headache to replace. But she was crushed by the loss of the jewelry, which is a family heirloom.

“I wore the earrings for my wedding, my daughter wore them for her high school graduation and prom,” Jill, who asked to withhold her last name, told The Post. “When you lose something so personal, you are hysterical.”

She’s not alone. Joshua Goodman, Deputy Commissioner, Public Affairs & Customer Experience for the NYC Department of Sanitation, said they get similar frantic calls a couple of times each month.