The 14-year veteran of the Galveston shoreline finally hit the milestone he had spent his retirement searching for.
GALVESTON, Texas — Gary Fogel, 61, whose relentless daily sweep of the upper Texas coastline yielded thousands of pieces of mildly jagged aluminum, died Tuesday from a fatal adrenaline surge after unearthing his 5,000th beverage pull tab.
Fogel took up sweeping in 2008 and quickly distinguished himself by meticulously mapping the density of discarded Schlitz cans beneath Pier 21. Colleagues remembered him as a purist who refused to use the discrimination filter on his metal detector, believing every fragment of buried foil deserved a second chance at the surface.
Most guys quit after their hundredth rusty nail, but Gary had the sheer endurance to keep digging until he found exactly the piece of trash he expected to find.
He is survived by his wife, Brenda, two indifferent adult sons, and a 40-pound plastic bucket filled entirely with 1980s-era soda hardware. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that well-wishers bury a dime three inches deep in wet sand.