Our member, Andrea Suarez, is the Founder of We Heart Seattle. She has lived in King County for twenty-four years and in the downtown area since 2009. In September of 2020, she started ‘We Heart Seattle’ out of love for the city–wanting it clean and safe for all to enjoy.
We Heart Seattle is an action-based, boots-on-the-ground movement that organizes trash cleanups in our public spaces and offers a helping hand to those in need. Through direct civic engagement, We Heart Seattle leads the way to a more compassionate and healthy community.
They recently reached significant milestones–more than 1,000,000 pounds of trash removed from the city’s parks and public spaces and more than 200 individuals helped off the streets. That includes more than 25,000 needles removed.
It was hard to comprehend the quantity of garbage and the sad stories that it told.
On Saturday, January 21, 2024, our University Sunrise Rotary Club, along with members of several other clubs (I saw members of the Ballard Club and the Magnolia Club) allied together under the direction of WeHeartSeattle to take on a cleanup of a hill off of Dexter Avenue North. The location was just off the Fremont Bridge.
Some of the garbage, bagged and ready to be picked up.
It was on a hill that was muddy and slippery. It was tough work that lasted several hours.
Frankly, the geography was not huge, but the amount of trash that was picked up was enormous.
The site that Scott Jamieson, Victoria Wenick, and Tom Ranken–when we started.
I worked with Scott Jamieson and Victoria Wenick in a small area. It was a tiny ravine just large enough at one time for very small shelter that might have been a home to one or two people. There was no evidence that anyone had been there for a long time. This picture shows what the site looked like as we began picking up garbage. It doesn’t look like much–and it wasn’t, on the surface–but it turned out to be many layers deeps.
Scott Jamieson and Victoria Wenick of the University Sunrise Club
We filled dozens of garbage bags from this site alone. There may have been a hundred or more wine bottles underneath this. Almost none were broken. They were probably placed to reduce rainwater from entering the shelter or to keep the shelter from being washed down the hill. We worked for several hours on this site.
There were many other volunteers working similar areas.
For the day, our group of 55 people hauled out approximately 10,000 pounds of garbage.
Since 2020, WeHeartSeattle has removed 1,108,700 pounds of trash during 326 trash pickup events. Two hundred people have been helped off the streets, but twelve bodies have been discovered. Rotarians have been an integral part of these efforts since the very first trash pick at Denny Park.
Members of the University Sunrise Rotary Club that took part included President Paul Meehan, Scott Jamieson, Victoria Wenick, Mike Madden, Lincoln Ferris, Andrea Suarez, and myself, Tom Ranken.
WeHeartSeattle is one of the beneficiaries of the annual BIG TASTE fund raiser on March 23, 2024.
“I do this kind of thing because I know that I can’t change the entire world, but I can change small parts of it that make a big difference. For example, we probably picked up hundreds of drug needles. If we hadn’t, how long would it be until a young person suffered a serious incident playing in the woods? We are probably saving lives.” -Tom Ranken
Some of the garbage pulled down the hill and ready for pick-up.
At one point, we found a stash of spent needles. There were a lot more scattered around at the site we worked on.
Andrea Suarez, Founder of WeHeartSeattle and member of the University Sunrise Rotary Club.
Victoria Wenick and Lincoln Ferris wander through the garbage at the end of the day.
We worked a pretty steep hill. We were told that city workers were not permitted to work hills. We suffered no known casualties.
The full group at the end of the event. Fifty-five people participated.
