The CO, XO Adjutant and Mr. Smith were in Reno for the Adult Leadership Conference. The CO said the unit can handle this mission without him besides he said he trusted his Senior Young Marines and staff. On June 7, 2008 the Temecula Valley Young Marines and some Young Marine Family members went out to Murrieta to help one of their communities with a city wide clean up (please see article here). When the Young Marines were arriving at the meeting spot, at the Los Alamos sports park in Murrieta they grabbed a breakfast snack
. Then they were assigned to vehicles and we were on our way to the unit’s assigned clean up spot from the City
. There were four huge garbage/recycling cans waiting for the Young Marines and a tractor crew provided by the County
. The staff gave out safety gloves to everyone and also gave them garbage bags. Then the Young Marines were setup in groups where they would go out and pick up anything that was trash or as Chief Warrant Officer four Byers (a parent volunteer) would say “if it doesn’t grow, it goes”. It was about 0915 when the Young Marines went out to clean up trash. I was designated at this event as the unit photographer and chronologist I took so many pictures (193) you wouldn’t believe what the before
and after
pictures look like and how much our Young Marines did, the photos are available to see on our units website (you can see Pictures here).
At the clean up the older and stronger Young Marines would pick up the heavier objects. There were a few 55 gallon oil drums and lots of bottles of oil every where but don’t worry the Young Marines didn’t pick up any hazardous objects or glass objects. Those were flagged for the Hazmat teams to take care of. The tractor crew that was there was a big help the tractor would scoop up the garbage, and the Young Marines would ensure that they made the tractor carry out massive amounts of garbage up to the garbage/recycling cans
. There were some areas where the Young Marines had to stop and get a staff member because of snakes or bees
. Some Young Marines were excited when they found something cool or interesting. There was one incident where Young Marines PFC. Michalak and PVT. Simms had to treat a scratch to a Young Marine. Young Marines PVT. Simms, LCpl. Taylor, N, Sgt. Taylor, Z, and Mr. Byers were working none stop picking up heavy objects and putting it on the tractor
. Mrs. Munoz and Mrs. Aguilar had a nice big pile of junk
. The females had a nice pile with carpets and trash
. And the rest of the Young Marines were told to roam around look for any other kind of trash
.
When we were done we found a friend, it was a dog just roaming around looking at what we were doing. Mrs. Munoz went over to try to give the dog some water but it seemed it didn’t want any so I went over to the dog (since I have two just like this one) and let it sniff my hand I reached over to pet it and it just layed down to have its belly rubbed. We had to leave but did not know whose dog it was so I picked the dog up and put it in the back of Mrs. Aguilars SUV
and we drove back to the Murrieta sports park for lunch. Mrs. Aguilar gave the dog her sandwich and the dog just forked it down. I asked the Murrieta Code Enforcement Officer to call Animal Control, after a while petting the dog and feeding it the Animal Control came and took the dog to a safer location. After we took care of all that the Young Marines had hot dogs, chips, and water or Sunny D for lunch
. When the Young Marines lunch settled down they went out to play soccer and football
. Sgt. Sparks and Mr. Aguilar were a funny site to see here you have Marine and a golfer playing with the Young Marines
,
. When it was 1400 the Young Marine parents came and signed out their Young Marines to go home. It was a tiring day and pretty hard to cleanup but it was worth the effort to help out our community. At least when anyone asks in the Young Marines or wherever I can say yes I do help out my community with conviction and pride. You did a great job Young Marines and Parent volunteers the CO is proud of us for what we did.
Thank you and
Semper Fi,
YM/1st Sgt Joshua Guiles