SAN DIEGO — Trash. Piling up around San Diego parks, playgrounds, and all along the sides of our roads. You can see people’s pictures, complaints, and posts on social media. Who will clean it up? Steven Phong and Jose Sifuentes said they are trying to.
The duo operates "CleanILoveSanDiego."
Phong and Sifuentes said they’ve picked up thousands of pounds of trash around the city in the past few months. BBQ grills, stoves, beds, feces, needles, bottles with urine, broken glass, old makeup, and wires. They say they’ve found it all. Steven said, “We find everything. Some stuff I can't even say because it's weird.”
Sifuentes said, “Needles, broken glass, Hepatitis A. You're putting yourself at risk.”
Steven and Jose take hours and even several days to get trash picked up. What is genuinely wild, though, is that they do all this because they want to. No one is paying them. They pay with their own money to drop off trash at the landfill.
Sifuentes said, “We've done stuff in the past we're not too proud of, and this is how we can give back to the community.”
Steven and Jose met last year through a sober living program. Now, they’re superheroes of sorts. Steven said, “It helps us to help the city, the people at least.”
If they see a trashed area, they stop and pick it up. Steven said, “As long as the sun’s out, we’re out.”
They post about it on the NextDoor App. People even give them suggestions about where they can go. They've cleaned the sand at a Rolando Village playground. Steven said, “We're looking for needles. We're looking for baggies. We know what people put in those things - drugs. Who knows if it's fentanyl? A little kid will grab it, and it isn't good. This is an example of a change. We can change it with our own two hands.”
People that find out what they are doing have donated PPEs, bags, and gloves. A friend who owns a hauling business has loaned them a truck to take the trash to the landfill. But that truck is now in the shop, so they’re trying to raise money for their truck to haul the trash. They’re $7,000 from their goal.
The duo set up a GoFundMe to support their efforts.
Steven said, “We could do so much. We work hard, and if we had our transport to transport garbage and litter to the landfill, we could do even more. There were years and years I was just a menace.” Jose interrupts. “We,” he says. Steven agrees. He said, “We were just a menace and now giving back... It's a...I can't explain it in words."
So they explain it by cleaning up these places no one wants to deal with. By cleaning the sand in a playground where children play, by cleaning up a park to honor a fallen officer, and around a local police department.
They don’t plan on stopping. They plan on doing more.
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