Hollywood woman decorates apartment with Oscars red carpet found in dumpster — and one winner now wants scraps for mementos

Hollywood’s biggest night became an even better morning for one Hollywood resident.

Paige Thalia scored a piece of 2026 Oscars history — eight feet long and six feet wide, to be exact — when she discovered a dumpster filled with discarded rolls of Academy Awards red carpet near Hollywood Boulevard bright and early Monday morning.

In true Hollywood fashion, the 32-year-old production assistant found her own 15 minutes of fame, after going viral with her story. In fact, Thalia tells Entertainment Weekly, one of this year’s Oscar winners reached out “to see if I can send him some of the extra pieces for him and his team to have as a memento.” She won’t reveal his name, but says, “I’m excited to send that his way!”

Hollywood couldn’t script a better story about how it all went down.

Thalia recently moved into a new apartment and had been in the market for an area rug, when she walked past the Dolby Theatre last week and noticed the iconic red carpet being installed ahead of the Academy Awards. A lightbulb went off, as she remembered seeing used red carpet in the trash after a previous year’s Oscars.

Within hours of the 2026 ceremony’s end, Thalia was back at the Dolby at 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning, but the coveted red carpet had already been ripped up from the theatre’s entrance.

“Then I walked a block away back behind the El Capitan [Theatre], and they had a big dumpster full of rolls of red carpet,” she told NBC Los Angeles, one of the many local media outlets covering her story.

“You could see it from the street. I walked up to one of the security guards. There’s a bunch of people around, and I just said, ‘I have an insane question. Can I have some of that red carpet?’ And, she said, ‘Yeah, go for it.’”

Thalia got to choose between two shades of red: a brighter cherry and maroon. The latter was her preference and luckily a giant roll was at the top of the heap in the dumpster.

“It’s so pretty,” she tells EW.

Lugging it back to her apartment deserved its own award.

“It was heavy,” Thalia says, “but luckily it was early enough in the morning that it wasn’t too hot yet, so it was manageable.”

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Every year she hosts an Oscars viewing party for friends, but an invite to Thalia’s apartment next awards season promises to be the hottest ticket in town, as she plans to roll out the red carpet, literally.

“I will definitely be making next year’s way more exciting!” she says.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly