Hollister
– It’s amazing what you can find in the trash.
Hollister – It’s amazing what you can find in the trash.
On Saturday, five local high school students discovered two stolen vehicles that had been abandoned in the San Benito Riverbed while picking up litter for a school project.
“That just goes to show you what a problem we have here and what bad shape the river is in,” said San Benito High School earth sciences teacher Jim Ostdick, who led the cleanup effort.
One hundred fifty students volunteered to help clean the San Benito River Saturday morning – some looking for community service hours and extra credit, others drawn by the idea of a hands-on earth science lesson or karma points for helping the environment. Working together from 9am to noon, the students collected enough refuse to fill three county dump trucks. Among the things collected were tires, a refrigerator, television sets and a Christmas tree from last year – plus a couple of pickup trucks.
“We had the students work in groups, in case one of them was hurt or lost,” said Ostdick. “One group of five went a little farther upstream than the rest of us, and they found two trucks. They didn’t know what to do, so they brought the registration papers back to me.”
According to California Highway Patrol Officer Chris Armstrong, the five boys – Andrew Muzik, Matt Flores, Kevin Ross, Jordan Archer and Averi Regan – found a white 1995 Dodge Ram and a red 1990 Ford F350, both reported stolen on Nov. 30.
The Ford was recovered in basically the same condition as when it had been stolen. But the Dodge had a broken window and damage to the front end. A radio and tools were also taken from the Dodge.
Both vehicles were returned to their owners by 3pm Saturday.
“It’s not uncommon for stolen cars to get dumped someplace – either they took them out for a joyride and got bored or they started to get the feeling somebody was on to them,” Armstrong said. “But I’ve never heard of cars being found in this location.”
In 2005, 167 cars were stolen in San Benito County, a 3 percent increase from the prior year. Of those, 140 of those were eventually recovered and returned to their owners – often with help from civilians, though rarely from high school earth science students.
“A lot of times a car will get dumped on someone’s property and they’ll call us to take a look at it, and sure enough it’s stolen. Or somebody will suspect someone on their street,” Armstrong said. “It isn’t always us identifying cars on the side of the road.”
Ostdick said he used the incident as a teaching tool to stress to students the importance of caring for natural resources.
“These sort of things aren’t being left by teenagers walking by the river and leaving trash,” he said. “It’s from adults who don’t want to pay the dumping fee. … We wonder why the Pajaro River is the most endangered river in the nation, but we’re right upstream. We’re a part of that.”
The five boys who found the trucks seemed more interested the possibility of a reward than the fate of the river, Ostdick said.
“I guess I better go grab them some McDonald’s gift certificates or something,” he said.
Ostdick says he will leading two more river cleanups this school year, one in late February and another in April. He encourages parents and other community members to become involved. For more information visit www.sbhsd.k12.
ca.us/~jostdick/main.html.
Danielle Smith covers education for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or [email protected]
