Longtime resident Janet Reichl is in the business of trash – or treasure, depending on how you look at it.
For close to 30 years, Reichl, 76, armed with a trash-grabber and a bag, has been venturing out on the town several days a week in an effort to chip away at the city’s garbage footprint.
Recently, a few little helpers have joined her trash-capades.
Reichl’s garbage collecting mentees include her elementary school neighbors, who have been using the garbage hunts as part of their homeschooling curriculum for the past year. Each child has their own trash grabber, and Reichl handles the trash bags.
“They love all the fun things that they can find, like balls and little toys, and I think that’s what’s really gotten them interested,” she said.
The children join Reichl as often as once a week ‒ and sometimes more sporadically, she said – but she’s out three to seven times a week, no matter what.
Reichl generally focuses on north Durango, but occasionally ventures to other zones. She frequents a half-mile stretch of East Animas Road (County Road 250) and a half-mile stretch of East 32nd Street, both of which she adopted through the county when she first moved to Durango back in the late 1990s.
She also cleans parking lots, the river trail, drainage areas, alleyways, parks and open spaces around town through Durango Parks and Recreation and about 5 miles of forest roads near Mancos as part of an adopt‑a‑road effort through the San Juan Mountains Association.
She and her special helpers focused on the Fort Lewis College area Thursday.
Though Reichl has been involved in trash cleanup efforts in Durango since the 1990s, she began picking up trash in earnest within the last decade, when a hip injury made it difficult for her to hike. It was a way to get exercise while doing something that felt important, she said.
“I couldn’t hike as much in the mountains, but I could do a walk,” she said. “And so I did walks, and I increased the amount when I was doing the trash pickup.”
Reichl’s hip later improved, but the trash collecting has stuck as she’s aged.
“I’m getting older. ... For medical reasons that have kept me from doing mountain hiking, I still do the trash pickup instead,” she said.
Reichl is more than just a trash-pickup queen: she’s also a seamstress, a detective and a collector.
She’s found a range of fascinating items – including jewelry, cellphones, wallets, clothing, single socks and gloves, and an anatomically correct light-up male doll featuring a kilt and angel wings.
“I pick up trash because it is a treasure hunt for me as well as it is for these kids,” she said.
Reichl cleans and repairs the items she can salvage – most often clothing – and takes them to donation centers or to the Manna soup kitchen.
She also collects single earrings, gloves and socks and keeps them in bins at home in hopes she’ll find their matches. And she’s been successful a time or two at reuniting a set. Some of the mismatched items are sold in garage sales to be repurposed as sock puppets or scrap material, she said.
Whenever Reichl thinks an item has been lost, she puts on her investigator cap to reunite it with its owner.
She’s managed to return dozens of stolen or lost pieces of mail and at least three stolen wallets to their rightful owners – one of which she tracked back to the owner using only a business card for a veterinarian left inside.
Reichl managed to track one piece of mail – which included an uncashed check for more than $300 – to a person living in Chicago. The person had been passing through Durango when the mail was lost, she said.
Though Reichl enjoys her role as one of Durango’s premier trash-retrievers, after close to 30 years on the hunt she’s thinking it may soon be time to lay down her trash-grabber.
“I feel like I need to cut back on it, (because) it’s gotten a little bit (overwhelming),” she said. “But it’s something that makes me feel very useful, (and) you know, the older you get, the less useful you feel about things. So, I continue it for that reason.”
The thanks Reichl receives from the community matters, she said.
“It’s a real nice thing when you’re out, (and) people say, ‘Nice,’ ‘Thank you,’ ‘What you’re doing is exceptional,’ or just plain, ‘Thanks for doing what you do,’” she said.
She encourages others to get outside and try their hand at the world of trash collecting, treasure hunting and investigating.
For Reichl, picking up trash is about more than just collecting discarded items.
“I do it because it gives me a feeling like I’m doing something worthwhile,” she said.
epond@durangoherald.com
