A Los Angeles woman now gets to walk the red carpet every day.
Paige Thalia, 32, moved into her Los Angeles apartment three weeks ago and was in search of a new rug. Luckily for her, the Oscars were coming up.
The 98th Academy Awards were held on March 15 at the Dolby Theatre. Days before the ceremony, Thalia, a production assistant, tells TODAY.com she was walking her dog when she witnessed the red carpet set up. And that’s when she knew.
“It just struck me that they would have left over after. And at the same time, I’m looking for a rug,” Thalia says.
The morning after the Oscars, Thalia had a plan to wake up at 5 a.m. and head over to the venue. But after sleeping through her alarm, she arrived at the Dolby Theatre around 8:30 a.m. Upon arrival, she said the carpet “was totally gone.”
“I just walked around the area trying to figure out where it might be,” she says. “I didn’t want to go home without trying. And then I stumbled upon it on the next street over.”
She eventually found the carpet in a dumpster near the El Capitan Theatre, across the street from the Dolby. In a TikTok video documenting her search, which has amassed over 4 million views, she says a nearby security guard told her she could just “climb up here and get some.”
After she dragged it home, she unrolled it in her living room and started vacuuming.
The red carpet now resides near her vinyl collection, and she’s ecstatic about how it looks.
“I’m gonna cut it to kind of an abstract shape, because it’s already kind of a weird shape and then I want to get it backed and get the edges all trimmed off so that it actually works like a rug,” Thalia says.
“It’ll last, and it looks good,” she adds.
As of March 19, Thalia’s initial video has received more than 500,000 likes. She says she didn’t expect her video to go viral, calling it “still bizarre.”
“I actually just was walking home, and some people had asked if it was still there, so I went and took a look, and they’ve since moved it away from the streets — no one can get it,” Thalia says. “I ran into five different people who were all down there at the same time trying to get some because they saw my video.”
In addition to people on social media enjoying her red carpet journey, so, too, are her friends and family.
“They’re excited to come over and walk on it,” she says with a laugh.
Thalia now has a piece of Academy Award history in her home while also representing the value of being thrifty.
“Part of me wanted to go back down there and just cut it into pieces and hand it out to people, because I think a lot of people would be happy to take it,” Thalia says.
As a production assistant living in America’s entertainment capital, she says having the memorabilia is extra special.
“And I thought it was a really good Oscars year,” Thalia adds. “So out of all years I could have gotten a carpet from, I’m really glad that it was this one.”
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
