Storming the Beach

Doris Wilmoth-Pinnick of Huntington Beach parked her wheelchair at the sand’s edge Saturday and trudged toward the surf on crutches, plucking trash off her city’s coastline.

She felt compelled to join a record crowd of Orange County volunteers who pitched in for California’s 15th annual Coastal Cleanup this weekend, despite her handicap and despite a stretch of Huntington Beach being closed when a batch of used hypodermic needles washed ashore last week.

The needles were gone by Friday morning and the area declared safe, but only a smattering of volunteers joined Wilmoth-Pinnick and tackled the garbage along Huntington Beach’s sandy shore.

“I did almost a bag full of trash. If I can hop around and pick up trash, everybody can,” said Wilmoth-Pinnick, 49. “I haven’t heard anything about people finding syringes.”

More than 4,500 volunteers descended on Orange County beaches Saturday, the most ever for the yearly event, and picked up more than 65,000 pounds of trash from San Clemente to Seal Beach.

The effort was part of the International Coastal Cleanup, one of the world’s largest volunteer efforts.

Along the Orange County coast, busy hands--belonging mostly to children--filled trash bags with empty beer cans, shards of glass, and foam containers.

Volunteers in boats and kayaks also floated off Newport Beach and fished trash out of the water.

Among the discarded refuse found Saturday was a sewing machine, a StairMaster, four Christmas trees and a dead Chihuahua. One volunteer also came across a live boa constrictor.

This year, Karen Everett and her 15-year-old son Greg also found a sandy spot along Upper Newport Bay littered with golf balls.

“Someone must be practicing nearby,” she said, as her son found the 11th ball of the day.

The standard cleanup equipment given to children included rubber gloves, and forms to record trash and treasures found during the day. Records of the collected trash will be compiled to study the most common types of litter and how to combat them.

Edward Waterfall, a spokesman for sponsors of the Huntington Beach cleanup, estimated that several hundred people helped on Saturday, picking up more than 20,000 cigarette butts at Huntington Beach.

Still, some people remained wary of Huntington Beach, which was hit with a one-two punch of beach closures recently.

A 4.2-mile stretch was closed for two months this summer because of high bacteria levels, and a portion was roped off again Thursday and early Friday while the hypodermic needles were removed.

“I got a zillion phone calls asking if the cleanup was still going on because of the accident with the hypodermic needles,” said Penny Elia, spokeswoman for the Orange County Visitor and Convention Bureau that sponsored part of the event.