Volunteer Cleaning Crew Sweeps Through Town

If you clean it, the criminals won’t come. That was the premise behind Operation Clean Streets, a community cleanup effort in downtown Lemon Grove Saturday morning as residents picked up trash, painted curbs and bus stops, and mulched the traffic medians. The event was sponsored by the .

“Everyone here is setting an example to show this is a community where people care about Lemon Grove,” says Jim Wieboldt, the station's crime prevention and community outreach specialist. “If criminals see that Lemon Grove is well-maintained and taken care of, they will go elsewhere.”

While volunteers were cleaning the streets, local law enforcement was busy behind the scenes running concurrent warrant sweep and gang suppression  operations.

More than 200 participants from organizations including Rotary International, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, schools, churches, Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts answered the call to spruce up downtown for the holidays.

The volunteers started work at 8 a.m. and were expected to continue to 1 p.m. cleaning up from the 7000 block to the 8400 blocks of Broadway. EDCO provided gloves, safety vests and trash bags. City public works employees handed out rakes, shovels and cans of paint to participants as they went from chore to chore.

“People really got to pick up after themselves," says 9-year-old Ulolo Samoata, who was working alongside his mother and two brothers with other members of the Lemon Grove ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. “People really don't care about their own city.”

Katie Dexter, Lemon Grove school board president, who was picking up trash along Broadway, said someone asked her, “What kind of community service are you working off?” She set the person straight that the volunteers weren't offenders being punished.

“I heard about this through the Lemon Grove Collaborative and then there was a all-call to families in the district to help,” Dexter says. She added that she would like to see this done on a quarterly basis. San Miguel, Golden Avenue and Monterey Heights were among the schools participating in the cleanup.

Joan Delasaux, who participated alongside Dexter says, “When you walk back (over area that was already cleaned) you see a major difference. It's really cool.”

“I'd like to see this on a more regular basis,” Delasaux added. “Kids are picking up cigarette butts and are saying, ‘ew.’ ”

Indeed cigarette butts and cigarette wrappers were abundant along Broadway, participants said, in addition to some small liquor bottles and paper trash. Several people labeled the Broadway median a “big ashtray.”

“I want to make a statement for the community, a way to jump in and encourage others to make this a safer and cleaner community,” Kathleen Sorensen of Cornerstone Community Church says while painting a curb.

“This is my community, and if we work together and be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ, we can do amazing things.”