They’re here to clean up this town — and gather new friends

Volunteers bond as they collect the trash along L.A.-area streets

- BY DAKOTA SMITH

CHRISTINA HOUSE Los Angeles Times DANNY Sinclair, front, and Georgia Altmayer of Volunteers Cleaning Communities fill up trash bags.

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.