Elizabeth Gibson Rescued Million-Dollar Painting

In 2003, a woman named Elizabeth Gibson found Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo's 1970 work Tres Personajes in the trash on a New York City curb, unaware that it was worth about $1 million. Gibson knew little about modern art, but she felt the painting "had power" and carried it home. After four years of research, she learned through PBS that thieves had stolen it from a Houston couple's storage locker in 1987. Sotheby's sold the recovered painting for $1,049,000 in November 2007, and Gibson received a $15,000 reward plus a portion of the sale price.

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