It’s no secret that San Diego is in the middle of a homelessness crisis. State and city leadership have been vocal about tackling this complicated issue, but what can everyday people do?
NBC 7 reporter Jackie Crea spoke to an unlikely team working together to clean up your neighborhoods, inspiring others along the way.
Steven Phong and Jose Sifuentes try to stay under the radar. In the past, it was for seedy reasons, but now it’s to do some good in the community.
“I have a lot to give back. It’s like I wake up. I sleep. All my free time I have, all my free time I have, before school I’ll go and clean somewhere. I’ll find a street and clean somewhere,” said Phong.
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Picking up trash in Mission Valley might not be the most sought-after job. Especially, if it’s for free, but Phong and Sifuentes couldn’t have been more determined to clean up a ravine along Interstate 8 on Friday.
They are convicted felons. Between them are auto theft, identity fraud and drug convictions, and both are recovering addicts who met in a recovery program and are now on parole.
“Every day we fight the addiction in our life because we are addicts in recovery. So it goes hand in hand. So we wouldn’t be out here cleaning the street if we were still using,” said Sifuentes.
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But they couldn’t be better fit for the job. Their time on the streets, living in the shadows and feeding their addiction to drugs sent them to rock bottom.
Now they’ve replaced one addiction, hopefully permanently, with another. And it’s a much healthier, positive one: cleaning up San Diego and helping people while they’re at it.
“We just changed something on this earth. Like we actually did it with our own two hands,” said Phong, while describing the feeling of his clean-up efforts.
They also clean up trash left by homeless encampments. They try to help people they come across, too.
“We ask them questions like, 'Hey, do you need trash bags? Do you need Narcan. How are you doing? Do you need water? We have all that stuff in our truck,'” said Sifuentes.
For now, they’ve borrowed a truck to pick up the hundreds of pounds of trash. And they’ve started a GoFundMe account so they can buy their own to continue their goal: making a difference one piece of trash at a time.
And they say that’s only the beginning.
They hope their hard-learned lesson makes them mentors to young San Diegans, by chance. They don’t want to pick up trash like me, just to make themselves feel good.
“They can build rockets, they can be doctors and help people in a bigger way than I can,” said Phong
