Residents Come Up Winners in ‘Service Scavenger Hunt’

Jeff Davis had expected to spend Saturday digging in his Thousand Oaks driveway for an underground sewer line.

Instead two teen-agers were stabbing at the torn-up driveway with shovels and a post-hole digger as Davis looked on.

“These nice young men came around just as I was about to start digging and asked if they could do anything,” he said.

The two youths, Stephen Marx and Jeff Wilde, were on a “service scavenger hunt,” part of a youth conference held at the Thousand Oaks Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More than 200 teen-agers attending the conference spent Saturday morning performing household chores for people around Thousand Oaks or painting anti-pollution signs next to storm drains.

The tasks they performed could be anything: mowing lawns, sweeping driveways, pulling weeds, washing dogs. Along the way, the youths would also do some missionary work and project a good image for the church, said Karen Greding , the stake’s Young Women’s president.

In Davis’ case, the extra hands saved him hours of work. “I have bad knees and a bad back, and I probably would have had to putz around for hours,” he said.

Several blocks away, another group was busy stenciling curb signs next to drains with the warning “Don’t Dump, Drains to Lake.”

“Maybe this will make people think twice,” said volunteer Carlyn Wutkee.