Stockton's Summer Cleanup Army: Five Years of Turning Trash Into Community Pride

Refrigerator parts. Car components. Styrofoam from boats. Fencing. Big Gulp cups. Just a ton of microplastics. These aren’t items on a landfill inventory list—they’re what volunteers are pulling out of American Legion Park in Stockton every month this summer, as part of a beautification tradition that’s been quietly reshaping the waterfront for five years.

What started as a Father’s Day tradition by a man who’s since moved away has evolved into something bigger: a genuine community movement driven by people like volunteer Susan Collum Bradford and longtime volunteers Deke Leglu and his wife.“It takes an army to do this, an army of good people, trying to do the right thing for our environment,”Leglu said. There’s something powerful in that framing—not shame-based guilt, but an army of purpose. These aren’t environmental zealots lecturing from the sidelines. They’re backpackers who live by the phrase“pack in, pack out,”and they’re extending that ethic to their own backyard, literally.

The stuff they find tells a story about how human carelessness accumulates. A freeway overcrossing upstream creates an extra layer of complexity—junk tumbles down from above, mixing with discarded materials from the canal itself. It’s not glamorous work. It’s hot, it’s repetitive, and you’re wading through other people’s garbage. But month after month, these volunteers show up anyway, leaving American Legion Park better than they found it.

Here’s what’s worth noting: this isn’t a one-time viral moment or a heavily funded nonprofit campaign. It’s residents choosing to own their environment. Stockton gets a lot of headlines about challenges, economic struggles, and urban renewal efforts. This cleanup tradition deserves recognition not as a Band-Aid on a larger problem, but as proof that community stewardship is alive and thriving. The initiative continues throughout the summer, and they need helping hands. If you’ve ever driven past a local park and thought someone should do something about it—well, someone is. The question is whether you’ll join them.