Q&A with Rod Hankinson, who fostered local environmental stewards

Rod Hankinson is retiring in April after 36 years with the Washington Department of Ecology, where he hired and led around 2,000 teens during his time running the Ecology Youth Corps in Central Washington.

The program hires 14- to 17-year-olds to work picking up litter along the highway each summer.

Hankinson grew up in Moxee and graduated with a teaching degree from Central Washington University in 1983. After working as a substitute teacher in Moxee and Yakima for two years, he did a stint with the Department of Transportation working on bridges near Bellevue.

He came back to Yakima in 1989 to work for Ecology, the year curbside recycling was started in Washington state. He was known as “The Garbage Man,” teaching kids in schools about recycling through interactive learning, which included having kids write and perform rap songs. He took over the regional litter program in 1999.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Q: What’s your favorite thing about working with kids?

A. The change, how much they grow.

I’ve written probably 20 references this year. My favorite thing to do is write references for those kids after they’ve worked hard for me all summer long.

I try to promote a team-approach to my work. They’re not just workers, they’re young people who have goals, aspirations. All kids are trying to figure out where they fit in the world. And part of that is how to work, how to get up and get to work on time, do what you’re told, and get compensated for it.

They need structure.

And then they figure out that, “Hey, I can do this. This isn’t that bad.” And then the next job they get, they won’t quit.

That’s my end goal, for these kids to start to realize their full potential. It’s as simple as going to work on time and working hard and feeling good about it.

And then you get that paycheck: you’re going to go down to the 7-11 on Friday night and people are going to give you a hard time because you’re picking litter for a living, but you got a pocket full of money and they ain’t got squat.

Q: How do you want your time with Ecology to be remembered?

A. I just want people to think that I did right by the kids that work for me. That I gave them an opportunity to get a leg up on their life. Somebody helped me when I was a kid.

I applied for this job in ‘75 and I didn’t make the cut. I was honor society boy of the month for the Yakima Valley, and I didn’t make the cut. Well, that just made me all the more committed to get where I’m at today and for all these last 26 years of (leading the Ecology Youth Corps). I showed them.

In the past five years, I’ve had probably seven different kids of kids come to work for me.

And the only reason I know that is because I’m in the parent meeting with the kid and some parent raises their hand and says, ‘Rod, remember me back in 2001, I was on that such and such crew. This is a great job, you guys. I worked here when I was a kid. Now my kids going to work for him.’

I get chills just thinking about it.

I must be doing something right, if parents will send their kids to me after I made them work their asses off when they were kids, you know?

Q: What was the weirdest thing you’ve found on the side of the road?

A. We find the detritus of society on the side of the highway, everything, you name it.

One of the oddest things we found was about 20 years ago. I was working up on I-90 and I was checking on a crew. A young gal came up out of the ditch with her bag. I just stepped over her bag and went to the van to get something. She reached down right where I’d been standing and picked up something and asked me, ‘What’s this?’ And I look at it. It’s a Krugerrand (a coin from South Africa).

An ounce of gold on the side of the highway! And guess how much she got for it? 400 bucks. That tells you how long ago it was – an ounce of gold worth $2,000 now. Yeah, that’s one of the oddest things we’ve ever found.

We found one time up on the top of the pass and in Ellensburg, the crew found what they thought looked like human hands.

I went up. I mean, I got a call, “We found human hands, butchered human hands on the side of the road.”

This warrants Rob getting out of office, getting in a rig and going up and see what’s going on here.

I’m calling the cops and on my way up there to the top of Manastash Ridge there and they show me where it’s at. It looked like human hands that had been skinned.

And I’m sitting there thinking we got us a body. My first one. The cop comes up, looks at it, gets a shovel, puts it in a sack, throws it in the back and says, “damn bear hands.”

Bear hands? It’s got an opposable thumb. I guess they skinned the bear hands for the claws and left it there. It looks like human hands with the phalanges and everything.

It was creepy as hell, but it was a bear’s, not a person’s.

We find all kinds of stuff. Anything that people can carry in their car, we’ll find on the side of the road.

Q: What’s next for you?

A. What’s next for me is spending time with my grandkids. I’ve got a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old. Camping and fishing, spending time with them, that’s what I’m going to do.

And just spend time with my wife and enjoy our property. I’ve got a garden. She cooks and bakes and makes jams and jellies and pickles. All the stuff when you get older, that I never thought I’d do, we’re doing it and it’s just fun.

I really like what I do. I love it, and I’m going to miss it. But it’s time for a new chapter in my life.

And those grandkids, they’re the last two. I’ve got seven of them and these are the two youngest ones. And I want to spend time with them, quality time with them and try to mentor my grandkids like I’ve mentored all 2,000 of the kids that I’ve hired over the years.

Some of them I meet them in the grocery stores: “Hey Rod, I don’t litter. I still don’t litter.”