The Goldberg family of Cheviot Hills usually kept their 400-year-old menorah in a bank vault, but Ellen Goldberg decided to show the family heirloom to a religion class she taught at Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

She brought it home and left it in a paper bag–which was thrown out by the cleaning lady.What follows is a story by former Times reporter J. Michael Kennedy about one man’s struggle with sanitation officials to retrieve the silver candelabra from the Sepulveda landfill.

Three American nuns and another U.S. woman are shot to death in El Salvador.