By 7:45 a.m. Kim Ashbaugh has already picked up two bagfuls of broken glass, bottles and wrappers. Now, standing on one secluded beach on Tubbs Hill in Coeur d’Alene, she retrieves a used diaper from the base of a shrub.

“Everything turns into its own little garbage can,” she said.

By mid-morning on any given day, Ashbaugh has likely hauled several bags of trash off Tubbs Hill and is heading back for another sweep.

The Coeur d’Alene resident has been regularly cleaning Tubbs Hill for the past 15 years, going out on trash-collecting missions three or four times a week. In the summer she starts between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. The project is a combination of love, pride and therapy, she said.

“It’s embarrassing to me personally that someone would come to my city and see all this trash on their first walk around Tubbs Hill,” she said.

“I can’t clean the world,” she added. “But I can clean Tubbs Hill.” Full story. Eli Francovich/SR

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