One Man’s Trash … Retiree Turns Dumpster Diving Into Constructive Hobby

Stephen Kosnac gets his holiday bargains when the sales are over - sometimes when the stores are closed.

And he’ll rifle through all sorts of garbage to find them.

Really.

The self-described “pack rat” spent the day after Christmas much as he spent the day after Easter - rifling through a department store Dumpster, looking for treasure in the trash.

Call it a hobby.

“They (stores) throw away lots of good stuff,” the Post Falls man says.

He’s found broom handles he turns on an in-home lathe for ornamental woodwork. When a sporting goods store moved to a new location, Kosnac found tossed-out fishing line and lures.

“Why should it go to a garbage dump, rot away and feed a bunch of parasites?”

In some places digging through trash is illegal: Kootenai County outlawed it by ordinance. But Coeur d’Alene Police say only trespassing laws apply in the city and Kosnac often asks before pawing.

It’s part curiosity, part political statement against waste and over-consumption.

For Kosnac, a 70-year-old ex-pipeline engineer who likes to revitalize damaged goods, Dumpster diving is primarily a creative outlet during retirement.

“I like to putz around,” he says. “I’ve always been sort of a Mr. Fix-it.”

Tossed out mechanical equipment? He’ll rip it apart. Can’t be fixed? He’ll horde the nuts and bolts.

True, he kept the discarded fishing lures. But most of what he makes is given away, something he picked up from his father - a first-generation middle-class Dumpster diver.

The elder Kosnac had always been frugal.

Stephen Kosnac Sr. opened a gas station in New Jersey in 1929 - just in time for the Great Depression.

By the 1950s, his father started lurking behind New Jersey stores, getting in good with workers, who often called him when a fresh load of junk was being tossed.

The elder Kosnac became something of a multi-holiday Santa Claus, repairing damaged merchandise and giving it away.

“Dad would pile clocks in the living room and work on them in front of the television,” Kosnac said.

“A vase would come through from India with a chip in it, he’d fill it in with some epoxy,” he says. “He’d take a broken gas room heater and if the motor worked, he’d make it into an attic fan.”

The frugality wasn’t lost on his son.

Kosnac built his Christmas nativity scene from broken roof shingles and built plant holders for his neighbors out of tossed-out shelving.

Last summer he built his wife a quilt holder from junk wood that won a prize at the county fair.

Last week, Kosnac found 22 shoes, four gloves and two hats that had been slashed with a knife and thrown away outside a store. He called the manager, outraged.

But the shoes were mismatched, the gloves and hats damaged and manufacturers often require stores to destroy damaged goods.

“People sometimes try to bring it back for refunds” after finding it in the trash, store manager Shirley Powers says.

Mary Anne McCain, with Goodwill Industries in Spokane, said most stores are good about donating items they can’t sell “but there’s lots of useful stuff that does end up in the garbage.”

And Kosnac will find it.

“There’s lots of seniors out there who are glad to clean up stuff and make it useful again,” he says. “I’m just one of them.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo