The retirees gathered at 8 a.m. near the G Line station in Canoga Park, impossible to miss in their neon yellow vests. They clutched trash bags and surveyed the expanse of trash-filled sidewalks and gutters before them.
Group leader Jill Mather, who walks and talks with the efficiency of a military general, laid out the task ahead: Clean a milelong stretch of Sherman Way.
For the next two hours, they plucked Q-tips and chicken bones off the ground with grabber tools. They pulled paper plates and coffee cups from bushes and snatched soiled napkins and vape canisters from the gutters.
Mather scooped a black slipper from an abandoned shopping cart.
“It makes us feel good,” Mather said, lugging a bag. “It’s visibly different. It’s instant gratification.”
By midmorning, the San Fernando Valley sun bore down on the crew as their assignment ended. Alan Aaronson, 71, flexed his fingers — he was getting a cramp from his gripper.
But he and others would be back the next day to go “trashing,” as they call it.
And the day after that.
Meet the trashers
Volunteers Cleaning Communities is one of L.A.’s largest cleanup groups, with members — mostly retirees in their 60s and 70s — fanning out across the west San Fernando Valley six days a week. Offshoots have formed in the East Valley, Brentwood and Santa Monica, with total membership of about 250 and a newsletter reach of 3,000.
The cleanups end with a social hour at a nearby coffee shop.
Frustration with the city’s filth motivates them to volunteer, but what keeps them together are the friendships. After years of demanding jobs, caretaking or the death of a spouse, the volunteers say the group provides a sense of purpose and is an antidote to loneliness.
Aaronson, a retired sales manager in the entertainment industry, lives in West Hills and goes trashing three or four days a week. He turned to the group during a rough period after his wife died.
“I like going to coffee after, I like hanging out with people,” he said. “I like the whole communal exercise.”
Danny Sinclair, 75, moved in 2020 from Tampa to Chatsworth to be near his son following his wife’s death. He said he felt isolated and adrift until he joined the group. The former insurance executive trashes five days a week, and hikes in the Santa Susana Mountains every Friday afternoon with several volunteers.
“I came to California not knowing anyone except my son and his family,” he said. “I got a new family.”
The work also gives the volunteers a modicum of civic control in a city where they often see too much lawlessness — from graffiti to open-air drug use.
“You clean up your little area for two hours and you feel like you can do something,” said Chatsworth resident Ann LaManna, 70, a retired psychotherapist.
Claudine Singer, 72, brings knee pads so she can crouch in the street to scrape out the gutters with a metal claw. Cars whip by — dangerously close — but she enjoys the work of digging out leaves, dirt and pine cones.
“Beautification is in my blood,” said Singer, a former interior designer who also gardens and makes homemade dog food. She drives from Simi Valley five days a week to go trashing.
After the Canoga Park outing, about two dozen volunteers sat around a table in a Starbucks, resting in the air conditioning. Some talked about the upcoming birthday party for a 91-year-old member, the group’s oldest volunteer.
“Fifty-five bags of trash,” interrupted Mather, leaning across the table to announce the morning haul.
Some chatted about “Plogging,” a Swedish practice that combines jogging while picking up litter, but Mather expressed skepticism.
“We’re serious trashers.”
Members wore pins with a photo of Cash Vandervort, a popular volunteer with a white beard and bright blue eyes who died earlier this year at 86. He didn’t have any close family members. Several volunteers were with him in the hospital, holding his hand, when he passed.
Few knew each other before joining, but they now play pickleball, line dance and gather for game nights. Last year, many members took a cruise along the Mississippi River. A trip to Ventura is in the works.
Mather, 76, a former executive at a hospitality management firm, awards a pin after a volunteer completes 25 cleanups. She hands out birthday presents and throws an annual Christmas party.
“You have to treat volunteers better than employees,” said Mather. “The volunteers don’t have to come back.”
Mayor Bass wants a clean city
More than a decade ago, a City Hall report about the state of litter and illegal dumping warned that some neighborhoods were in a “constant state of uncleanliness.” The report blamed the city for failing to enforce anti-dumping laws, and businesses and residents for scattering the refuse.
As the homelessness crisis worsened, more trash piled up. The city scaled back street-cleaning operations during the pandemic because of staffing shortages.
Today, litter is often as much a part of the landscape as L.A.’s palm trees and mini-malls. Drivers navigate twisted pieces of clothes in the roadway. Stray plastic bags hang off trees. Trash bins overflow.
Though it may feel futile, Mayor Karen Bass is encouraging residents to beautify the streets for the 2028 Olympics, and joined Mather at a cleanup event in Sherman Oaks earlier this year.
Beyond sidewalks and parks, Mather’s volunteers venture into the Santa Susana Mountains, using a truck to pick up items including abandoned motorcycles and washing machines. They also don hard hats and brave a six-mile shoulder of the 118 Freeway to pick up litter.
Coming across $100 bills on the freeway is surprisingly common, said Mather. Any cash goes toward the nonprofit.
Among their more disturbing finds: A box containing human ashes, a gun, dead dogs.
As they work, the volunteers are sometimes mistaken for criminals sentenced to community service. Passersby comment, “‘We are so sorry, what did you do? Did you get a DUI?’ ” said Mather.
Drivers honk in approval and locals cheer on the members, a fixture in the Valley.
“Thank you VCC! Appreciate it!” said Chatsworth resident Primo Custodio as he walked by several volunteers in May.
The trash they painstakingly remove — plastic water bottles, discarded baby strollers, Taco Bell bags — eventually re-appears, sometimes in a day. But the volunteers know the streets would look much worse without them.
Mather doesn’t point fingers and just wants the trash gone. “We want our communities to look nice,” she said. “We want to be proud of where we live.”
Los Angeles City Councilmember John Lee, who represents the West Valley, called the volunteers’ work “infectious” and credits the group for making his council district look cleaner than other parts of the city.
“They have made a huge difference,” said Lee. “Not only do they volunteer their time, these are people who lug couches out of a canyon.”
Finding friends amid trash
Mather, who lives in Chatsworth, said she lacked neighborhood friends when she retired in 2019 because she’d spent the last 45 years focused on her career.
During the pandemic, she took long walks and picked up litter to ease her boredom. Looking for company, she posted on Nextdoor, asking if anyone wanted to join her. They did, and her nonprofit was born.
Mather’s grandkids call her “trashy grandma.” She plans weeks ahead for the cleanups, posting the address on the group’s website.
“Park on the Baskin & Robbins mall area — 7628 Reseda Blvd. Look for yellow vests. COFFEE: Reseda & Victory Starbucks.”
Mather never knows whether a handful or more than two dozen members will show up.
At the meeting spot, she bunches the volunteers into small groups and leads them down a block. They’ll walk for an hour and then head back on the opposite stretch of street.
She’s also a board member of the Chatsworth Kiwanis Club, and invites her cleanup volunteers to that group’s events.
“I really wanted to have a social life when I retired and now I have it,” said Sarah Lewow, 71, a retired teacher. During a recent Kiwanis-run bingo night, Lewow sat next to Sinclair — the former Tampa insurance executive. The pair said they have become best friends.
Down the table sat David Weisberg, 61, and Nancy Nicoloro, 57, who met three years ago on a cleanup and fell in love. The romance started after Nicoloro asked Weisberg if she could borrow a pair of gloves.
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