When Helen returned home from a visit to the Townmead Recycling Centre and reached for her mobile phone, a chill ran down her spine.

For she quickly realised that the handset may well have been accidentally tossed into one of the many skips.

Desperate to get the phone back, she raced back to the recycling centre more in hope than expectation.

There, she explained her plight to staff, Mick Mallon, the senior site supervisor, and colleague Ryan Ellington, who, remarkably, volunteered to pick his way through several of the skips in what seemed an impossible task.

Eventually, after wading through the waste, a faint beep was heard deep within the rubble and Ryan emerged smartphone in hand.

A relieved Helen, of Richmond Hill, said: "I want to say a massive, public thank you to Ryan and Mick, who helped me to find my phone after I accidentally threw it in a skip early this morning!

"It was only after I got home later that I realised and returned to the site and I didn't even know at that point which skip it might be in as I had used most of them.

"I was also particularly useless as this point as my glasses had completely steamed up and I could barely see a thing and the battery in my Apple Watch had died so I was feeling a bit helpless and hopeless, but everyone I spoke to at the site was very helpful and reassuring.

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"Ryan, in particular, went above and beyond and essentially searched through an entire skip of rubbish for me until he managed to hear a faint beeping and we felt a wave of hope that my phone was in there. It was such an incredible relief!

"Mick, the supervisor, also was fantastic and I can't thank him enough for taking my plight seriously and being so helpful.

"Those guys are fabulous and if you are going to the recycling centre in the next week or two I would be immensely grateful if you could help me repay their kindness with a nice word to them to make their day more pleasant."

Mr Mallon praised his colleague.

He said: "I would like to say Ryan's efforts of going through the waste produced a good result finding the lady's phone. This was a good team effort.

"Both Ryan and I were happy we could help in this way."

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