now *that* is a shitty commute

Though I don't think it's as bad as the daily drive in Los Angeles:

Rebecca Huston, 32, was last heard from last Wednesday evening. Friends and family began searching for her after she failed to show up for work at a veterinary clinic in Richland.

A landfill employee at the Ukiah Transfer Station in Ukiah, Calif., about 100 miles north of San Francisco on Highway 101, saw Huston's feet sticking out from a garbage pile Tuesday morning. [...]

Huston told sheriff's deputies in Mendocino County, Calif., that she was driving to work Thursday morning when a man wearing a ski mask and carrying a gun climbed into her car, demanding that she drive south. The next four nights, she told deputies, they drove through Washington, Oregon and California. They stopped occasionally at rest stops and service stations.

She told police the man forced her into a trash bin Monday night and told her not to get out. The container was emptied into a county garbage truck and the trash was transported to the landfill. [...]

[Kennewick Detective Sgt. Randy] Maynard said it wasn't clear if Huston was knocked unconscious or had fallen asleep when she went into the trash bin. There was no indication she had been assaulted.

I hate to make light of what happened to this poor woman - it must have been truly terrifying - but doesn't the whole thing strike you as slightly cartoonish? A carjacker makes a woman get into a trash bin? And she stays there as it's lifted into a garbage truck? And a landfill worker just sees two feet sticking out of a big pile of trash? And the woman's friend's reaction is one of those things where you know what she means, but unparsed it sounds sort of strange:

"I'm pretty overwhelmed emotionally," Tere Page, Huston's friend and former co-worker, said of her discovery. "This is the best news I've had in years."

It seems to me akin to this:

Police person: We found Brian, buried under a huge pile of trash.
Brian's friend: Oh thank God.