For the past year, the die-hard University of Utah football fans had been saving up the money to pay back Ben's parents for season tickets, they said.
They started tearing the house apart to search for the cash - under the rugs, in the drawers, in the couch, even in the garbage, News4Utah reported.
"I'm digging through the trash," Ben Belnap told KSL, "and [Jackee] hollers and says, 'I found it.'"
It was in the shredder. In a thousand tiny pieces.
Immediately, Jackee Belnap said, they knew Leo was the culprit. He had been helping her shred junk mail and documents, she told KSL Apparently, he thought he was being helpful this time, too.
First, Belnap cried, she said - just for a minute. Then, they laughed.
"As devastated and as sick as we were," she told News4Utah, "this was one of those moments where you just have to laugh."
Hope, and perhaps the money, may not lost for the couple.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing offers a solution in the event that a toddler destroys hundreds of dollars by accident. In fact, the bureau has an entire "Mutilated Currency Division," which is devoted to "redeeming" burned, waterlogged, chemically altered, rodent-chewed or deteriorated money - a free service to the public. It handles approximately 30,000 claims per year, redeeming more than $30 million in mutilated cash, according to its website.
The currency "must be forwarded to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for examination by trained experts before any redemption is made," the website says.
This is the route the couple hopes to take. Ben Belnap told KSL they contacted the Treasury Department with questions, and were told to send the remains of the money Washington in Ziploc Baggies.
On Twitter, Ben snapped a picture of the couple's meticulous efforts separating the currency from the other shredded pieces of junk mail, so that they could send it to the government. And in six months to three years, they may get it back.
In the meantime, Leo will not be using the shredder anymore. The silver lining: "Well, this will make a great wedding story one day," Jackee Belnap told KSL.
