Green? Or to make the green?

I wrote a story for The Post recently that I'd been thinking about for quite some time - Recycling for Profit. I thought it to be a fairly straight forward profile about an older couple, Tom Cullums and Charlotte Buck, whose primary source of income besides government assistance is collecting cans from students and, more accurately, their parties.
The completed story was approximately 1,300 words long. The story that ran in The Post was 500 words shorter.

The items cut included details about their live that were deemed irrelevant to the story, anecdotes about their cumulative 40-plus years of scrap hauling and their "trials and tribulations with the outside world".

There are several items on my to-do list:

- I want to tell the story about these two Athens icons unknown by name, but known by title and service.
- I want to seek out and speak with their competitors in the can collecting realm.
- I want to hear and report about stories of the salvage owners and their interaction with the police who stop often looking for stolen catalytic converters, construction material and copper piping.

- Finally, in a related matter, I want to find who stole two grills from my porch. Whoever it was, they can keep them, but I want to know why and how much money they received from the scrap.