After the Cal Heights Clean Streets crew had their tools stolen while volunteering in the Bixby Knolls neighborhood of Long Beach last weekend, it only took about a day for the community to raise the funds to replace what was taken.
“Within like a day of it happening, we made up for it. People just really responded with their hearts,” Tom Underhill, Cal Heights Clean Streets organizer, said.
The Cal Heights Clean Streets crew was tending to multiple trees along Atlantic Avenue on behalf of the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association when someone stole some of their unattended tools.
A Ring doorbell across the street caught the thieves on camera, but only captured the side of their vehicle rather than the license plate.
The camera captured someone in a large gray SUV “jumping out and piling tools in the back of their truck and burning out,” Underhill said.
According to Underhill, on the video it appeared as though someone was behind the wheel of the vehicle as another person exited the passenger side before stealing the tools.
Among the stolen tools were five shovels, five pickers and three brooms.
After the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association shared what happened to the Cal Heights Clean Streets crew on Facebook, a surge of donations came in from neighbors who appreciated the group’s years of community service.
“Donations were just pouring in and it was super heartwarming to see so many people trying to help us recoup them,” Stacey A. Morrison, one of the founders of the Cal Heights Clean Streets crew, said.
Morrison was first inspired to begin cleaning her community when she noticed a piece of litter while walking through the community.
“I actually was walking to lunch with a friend and he reached down and picked up a straw, and I was like, ‘That’s gross man, we’re going out to lunch, like why would you do that?’ And then it just kind of made me notice that there was a lot of trash in our area,” Morrison said.
Morrison began taking a trash bag with her when she went to walk her dog, cleaning up as she went.
Eventually this became Morrison’s regular Thursday morning routine, and she invited others to join her.
“It’s easy to complain about it, but we thought ‘Well why don’t we just do something about it?’” Morrison said.
The group slowly grew into what is now the Cal Heights Clean Streets crew, which has been in operation since 2008.
The volunteers meet every Thursday morning at 8:15 a.m. by the intersection of Wardlow Road and Lime Avenue to pick up litter in the California Heights neighborhood.
Besides keeping the area free of debris, Cal Heights Clean Streets volunteers also care for a stretch of trees planted along Atlantic Avenue from 45th Street to Del Amo Boulevard.
54 crepe myrtle and 12 sycamore trees in this stretch of Atlantic Avenue have been watered regularly for years by the Cal Heights Clean Streets crew, according to Morrison.
“We […] either have everyone fill up buckets and we just kind of do like a bucket brigade all up and down the street there, or we use our truck and we kind of just go tree by tree by tree and do it,” Underhill said. “So it’s always great if people see that we’re going to do a tree care day if they’d come out and volunteer.”
