Calexico residents show pride with downtown cleanup
CALEXICO — After a summer recess, residents here showed they truly cared for the city they call home volunteering to pick up trash and sweep the sidewalks as the monthly downtown cleanup returned now that school is back in session and milder temperatures cool the Valley.
Organized by the Brown Bag Coalition, the nonprofit previously helped set up winter homeless shelters and now has provided daily dinner service at Rockwood Park the last two years. Although Brown Bag took the lead it is actually a collaborative effort, noted co-founder Maribel Padilla. Businesses that contributed include Yum Yum Chinese Food Inc., D Poly Restaurants, IVT Ride and McDonalds, who also donates $200 monthly.
“High school volunteers (Calexico and Aurora) get credit for community service and they get time off for detention or make up hours for absences,” said Padilla. “But basically Brown Bag (making difference one brown bag at a time) is community-supported.”
On Saturday, 35 volunteers, including some of the homeless who use the opportunity to repay for meal service as well as five adult chaperones and 10 members from the office of Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia (D-56th) and Garcia himself gathered at Valley Orthopedic Clinic for cleaning efforts. Garcia told volunteers he reached out to Maribel a couple of months ago; he would like to help and do it more often as it is not that hard.
“What we do today is crucial, community service is extremely important,” said Garcia. “We can make our community a little cleaner and better. We will make a bit of a difference and merchants really appreciate our efforts.”
Imperial County Board of Supervisors District 1 Supervisor John Renison donated brooms.
“The cleanup is a great gesture, something you wish more people would get involved with,” said Renison. “It’s Maribel who mustered the troops. That’s the principal part, you got to be organized.”
Local resident and candidate for City Council, Jesus Escobar also volunteered.
“It’s really important to support and foster these types of events,” said Escobar. “We want to continue to get all the stakeholders involved; business, politicians and residents. If you love your city you should be involved.”
Arriving from Indio to participate was former Holtville resident Maria Elena Martinez with her son Michael.
Martinez is a cousin of Assemblyman Garcia and wanted to lend him support.
She remarked her son Michael loves to help out and was very talkative with all the residents he met during the cleanup.
“I was telling Eddie our grandpa, Marcos Hermosillo, he’s 102, when we visited him he was always out on the street early sweeping,” said Martinez. “He showed us it’s important to keep your place neat and tidy. And if our grandpa was able to help out he’d be here today.”
Also volunteering was Aurora Continuation High School student Daniel Gutierrez. He remarked they clean because they care for the city and the homeless as well.
“If we didn’t care about the city, we wouldn’t take time, said Daniel. “We would just go to Saturday School and make up our absences.”