Where’s Mary? Six days a week, three hours a day, you can find Mary Deering picking up trash with her Marymobile, a four-wheeled cart she wheels around the Village of La Jolla, cleaning it up. It’s all part of the Sparkle & Shine campaign, run under the auspices of the La Jolla Village Merchants Association, the community’s business improvement district. Spearheaded by Nancy Warwick, Warwick’s bookstore owner and an association board member, Sparkle & Shine has been a successful fundraiser. Individuals and businesses rent display space promoting themselves on eight-foot-tall banners placed strategically throughout town. The majority of proceeds from the campaign are then used to steam-clean Village sidewalks and do other essential beautification. Who’s Mary? Deering is a Santee resident who’s been employed for years doing custodial service for Warwick’s.
After nearly three months on the job, Deering’s got a handle on where all the trash “hot spots” are in town. “There always seems to be more trash in certain areas,” she said, noting her usual route is down Coast Boulevard, which can be extensively trashed especially after weekends, then head back up Cave Street. “There are a couple spots down by Vons in the bushes: It’s pretty bad,” said Deering, noting, “I just keep my head down looking in the gutters and in the weedy areas.” Deering had a ready answer when asked what the most-pervasive trashed item is. “The number one thing I pick up is cigarette butts, more than anything else,” she said. “It’s crazy,” she added, pointing out that there are trash cans on virtually every corner. Gum comes in a close second, sticking to everything, and is a gooey mess to clean up. Deering said she gets lots of reaction from folks when she’s out working. “When they ask me what I’m doing, I tell them, ‘I’m cleaning La Jolla,’ ” she said. “People walk by and say ‘thank you.’ And I say, ‘Thank you for noticing.’ It makes me feel like I’m doing something good.” Besides trash, Deering’s found other problems which she reports when she finds them. “There are drains where water can’t go down because they’re all plugged up,” she said. Deering said picking up trash is a never-ending chore. “I can walk down the street one way, then turn around and come back the other way, and there’s going to be trash there again already,” she said, adding that sometimes that can be helpful. “Sometimes, you see things you didn’t see going the other way,” she said. Deering said her cleanup cart “is quite loud sometimes when you go over a bumpy part of the street.” It also has no brakes. “I’m working on that, though,” she said, adding her utilitarian cart, which doubles as a promotional device, perfectly suits the task at hand. Showing off her cart, Deering produced one of its most utilitarian tools, a long-armed mechanical “grabber” she uses to avoid stooping while picking up trash. “Everything helps,” said Deering on people policing themselves and being respectful and thoughtful about not leaving trash. Picking up trash, as the old saying goes, “is dirty work, but somebody’s got to do it.” In La Jolla, that person is Mary Deering.