Woman finds reward in picking up after others

CARING-Jeri Edwards of Oak Park picks up trash on Rockfield Street near Red Oak Elementary School. Edwards, who collects garbage from the sidewalks and shrubs daily on her walks, says she loves her neighborhood and wishes more people would take care of it. When Jeri Edwards goes for a walk or a bike ride in Oak Park she always takes along a garbage bag or two. Without fail, the North Ranch resident fills the bags with trash during her workout.

Frustrated by the increasing amount of litter and rubbish she sees in the communityEdwards appealed for help last week at the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council meeting

"I'm overwhelmed. I can't keep up with it anymore," said Edwards, who's been picking up other people's trash since she moved here from New York eight years ago. "It's gotten progressively worse. It's alarming."

According to Edwards, much of the rubbish can be found in the area between Rockfield Street and Lindero Canyon Road to the west, all the way to Doubletree and Kanan roads to the east. On Rockfield, she often finds garbage along a wall that separates homes from the road. Edwards often picks up empty beer cans that she believes kids discard along local trails. While biking up North Lindero Canyon Road one day, Edwards filled 12 large plastic bags with trash.

"When you drive, you don't notice it. You have to get out and walk," Edwards said.

Hiking along a trail off Lindero, Edwards and her husband discovered a discarded shopping cart. They pulled it off the hill and walked it to one of the shopping centers on Kanan and Lindero Canyon. Along the way they picked up enough trash to fill the cart.

She picks up beer cans, paper cups, fast-food wrappers, plastic water bottles. "I don't want to point a finger. We're all to blame; gardeners, people in the shopping centers, kids coming home from school," Edwards said.

But she would like to see people take responsibility and help clean up the community. She has approached several homeowner associations about having maintenance workers keep the walled areas along Rockfield, east of Lindero, trashfree. She's called the management offices of local shopping centers to ask for help, but hasn't seen any improvement.

"They say 'thank you for bringing it to our attention,' but they don't do anything about it," Edwards said.

She suggested that it might be more effective for someone from the Municipal Advisory Council to contact those organizations. She'd also like to see schools encourage students to participate in some kind of cleanup/community service program.

"If you walk along Kanan, you notice it accumulates as you get closer to the schools," Edwards said.

She's interested in heightening residents' awareness, brainstorming on ways to keep Oak Park clean. She wants to see a message sent to children from parents and schools- -it's important to keep the community clean, for both aesthetic and environmental reasons.

"If we catch it here, it won't flow down to Malibu Creek and the ocean," Edwards said. "I don't know what the answer is. Maybe more trash bins, maybe more community awareness."

Todd Haines, chair of the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Councilagreed to look into the problem and suggested that schools might be willing to participate in a cleanup program.

Trash cans at Oak Park High School are often so full that students throw their trash "wherever," said resident Mike Paule. "Custodians say they're overloaded and can't get to grounds cleanup," Paule said.

Resident Mike Green suggested holding an Oak Park beautification day for residents to participate in a community cleanup.

"Look at how beautiful the surroundings are. They're marred by trash, I'm afraid," Edwards said. "It's a bad stain on the community."