Trashing the Fast Lane : Litter: Freeway cleanup crews find the darndest things--from loose cash to phone lists to Playboy magazines.

By BERKLEY HUDSON

July 22, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Litter pickup crews working the Foothill Freeway near Santa Anita Park have found so much cash that they have given the stretch a nickname: “The Money Strip.”

Bills of every denomination, it seems, blow from the car windows of horse-racing aficionados traveling to and from the Arcadia track.

“Last week I found a dollar bill. Somebody else found a fifty and two twenties,” said 20-year-old Tom Nguyen, dressed in the standard Caltrans orange hard hat and vest.

On a blistering hot Thursday, he and 10 other Department of Transportation workers, most of them doing community service work instead of jail time for misdemeanor convictions or traffic violations, were picking their way through the trash-strewn oleander hedges along the Foothill.

In a state where nearly 200,000 cubic yards of litter are collected in a year, cash is by no means the only thing thrown or blown from cars, trucks and motorcycles.

All finds go straight into the bright orange bags labeled CARE FOR CALIFORNIA. On a recent morning, the San Gabriel Valley booty included the resume of an actress (“HAIR: Honey blonde. EYES: Hazel Blue”), an onion peel, a yellow soccer ball, a sheet of sandpaper, a street map of San Diego, a dead pigeon and a 16-ounce cup from 7-Eleven with an emblem showing trash, litter basket and the words “Pitch In.”

“People throw it out as fast as we can pick it up,” said Stan Lisiewicz, chief of Caltrans’ maintenance field branch for Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

State officials estimate that this year’s litter pickup will cost the taxpayers $25 million, more than double what it cost four years ago. Nationally recognized litter expert Daniel Syrek of Sacramento says California’s litter tab is closer to $100 million when adverse affects on tourism and property values are considered.

For all its environmentalism, Syrek said, California lacks a comprehensive, preventive approach to litter. He has designed such programs for six states, including Texas, which started a “Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign.

“Litter isn’t toxic in the classic sense,” Syrek said. “It’s probably not going to kill you, though there are some cases where it has caused deaths, such as spills on the highway. But we concentrate on what comes out of the exhausts. Why don’t we concentrate on what comes of the windows too?”

Four years ago, when Caltrans picked up 155,000 cubic yards of trash, officials said that if the debris were put in dump trucks, it would fill a convoy reaching from San Diego to Los Angeles.

Although figures are not maintained for specific geographic areas, such as Pasadena, West Covina or La Verne, Caltrans officials estimate that in the northern half of the San Gabriel Valley alone, 100 cubic yards of trash--or as much as 800 bags full--are collected every week.

In addition, the Caltrans office based in Bassett, which covers the southern half of the San Gabriel Valley and surrounding areas, takes in as much as 2,000 bags of trash on some weekends.

A key factor in the statewide litter program, especially in Los Angeles County, is the use of special programs in which community service workers are referred by the court and welfare systems. These crews do the work of 600 employees each year; statewide, they take the place of almost 3,000 employees.

“Without them, we’d probably be ankle deep in trash,” Lisiewicz said.

Still, it is impossible to keep roadways free of litter. “If we go through this area with a fine-toothed comb, it would take us forever. We’ve got too big of an area and too few people,” Caltrans Foothill division foreman John Thome said as he surveyed scores of cigarette butts, apparently dumped from car ashtrays, in an area that his crew had cleaned minutes earlier.

“But it looks good at 55 m.p.h.,” he said.

Like a message in a bottle, litter creates roadside mysteries for the Caltrans workers.

With pistol-grip, rubber-tonged forceps, Tom Nguyen hoisted an unopened can of Budweiser from the sun-beaten ivy near the Rosemead off-ramp in Pasadena. Maybe, he surmised, somebody tossed the beer because they saw a cop?

With a “just-the-facts-ma’am” approach, he and several other Caltrans workers mused on the nature of litter on the 210 Freeway, a debris-lined Main Street for the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley.

Martin, a young man working off a 60-day commitment in lieu 90 days in the county jail, retrieved parts of a shredded Bible and put them in his litter bag.

He did not want to reveal his last name because he said he was embarrassed by his crime: being caught drunk and trying to break into a grocery store.

As he disposed of Psalms, Proverbs and parts of the New Testament, he told of spending four days in jail before being given the choice of picking up litter. Sweating, he said: “This is better than jail.”

After looking at a crumpled $28.50 check from the account of a Pasadena couple who bank with Far East National in Alhambra, Martin stuffed it into his litter bag. The April 13, 1990, check, payable to the Home Shopping Club, was unendorsed.

A major litter problem in the San Gabriel Valley is garbage-filled trucks, often uncovered, on their way to dumps such as Puente Hills, the nation’s second-largest landfill, and others in West Covina and Azusa. “The trucks have got stuff boiling out,” said Bud Jones, Caltrans Bassett supervisor.

A big rig pulled onto the shoulder next to Martin. The driver stepped out, ran to the truck bed and pulled a board from the side. “This was about to fall off,” he said, handing Martin a board with nails in it.

After the truck drove away, Martin said: “They say, when you first start, maybe you’ll find money or a dead body or Playboys. Sure enough, I found one, a Playboy.”

(It was a magazine, he explained, not a dead playboy.)

Martin said, “You find family pictures out here too.”

Five minutes later he plucked from the shoulder a color photograph of a squinting, grinning, bald baby in a stroller.

Just as there are said to be no atheists in foxholes, no one on a cleanup crew is a litterbug. “I’ve thrown out bottles and beer cans,” Martin said. “I’ll think about it before I’d do that again. I’m for Greenpeace and all that--saving the rain forest--but I never paid any attention to litter.” He spoke above the roar of traffic.

“These freeways are a mess. People should realize how much harm they are doing to the environment. Pretty soon, we’ll just have to make a landfill out of the whole place.”

A business-sized sheet of purple paper stood out from the other debris. Martin snapped it up.

It belonged to one Cheryl Chase of Burbank. Smudged and slightly torn, the single sheet testified to the brief motion picture, television and theater career of the 31-year-old actress, who these days is auditioning in New York.

Contacted by telephone there Thursday, she said she had no clue as to how a copy of her resume ended up on the Foothill Freeway.

“Wow!,” she said. “The what freeway? Is the resume purple? I must have been visiting my aunt in Sylmar. Where’s Arcadia? I wonder if it blew all the way there? I live in Burbank. It must have been a miracle. Or a pigeon. Maybe I submitted it for an audition. I was a crazy person, driving all around last month. Maybe I gave it to somebody and they threw it out.”

WHAT’S IN THOSE ORANGE BAGS? A recent morning’s worth of San Gabriel Valley litter finds: Actress’s resume (“HAIR: Honey blonde. EYES: Hazel Blue”).

Onion peel.

Yellow soccer ball.

Sheet of sandpaper.

Street map of San Diego.

Page from a Spanish-language newspaper.

Leaflet of Pasadena auto insurance firm (“Se habla Espanol”).

Leaflet of Hacienda Heights auto insurance firm (“Hablamos Espanol”).

Dead pigeon.

Phone numbers of Jon T., Mom and Michael in Oregon.

Business card from the Vermont Motel in Los Angeles.

Another onion peel.

“Jim Lloyd for Supervisor” sign.