A litter crew of three is working to clean up the Bald Hill Road area of not only trash on the side of the road but also the acts of troubled youth in the region.
Kyle Scharpf, Kaleb Osborne and Chase Langton, along with occasional volunteers, have spent over a month picking up trash along the road, particularly in a popular lookout spot locals refer to as “sunset.” They walk along the shoulders of the street with grabbers, reflective vests and orange cones and signs warning drivers of the crew.
Scharpf, who resides near the Bald Hill Road area, grew tired of area teenagers’ shenanigans, including leaving trash, drinking alcohol, lighting fireworks into the dry forest and shooting guns near neighborhoods. He began picking up trash on his own to the dismay of some local teens, who would drive by at 70 to 80 mph and toss beer cans in the trees.
“As I started to talk to the neighbors and try to clean the area, I started to realize exactly how bad it was. I buckled down and made a Facebook group (Sunset on Bald Hill Road), met [Langton and Osborne], and it just kind of spiraled and snowballed,” Scharpf said. “It started out as just trying to quiet down the corner because it was a bunch of drinking and burnouts and crazy young people stuff.”
Meanwhile, Osborne, a sophomore at Yelm High School, built a poor reputation in the Clearwood area as he often got in trouble with his friends. While he was swimming, his phone was stolen by someone who knew of Scharpf and his efforts to clean up the community, and the thief began threatening him from Osborne’s phone, but Scharpf had no indication that it was anyone but Osborne sending hateful messages. Scharpf posted the threats to the Facebook group.
“After that, I didn’t know what to do. Everybody was hating on me. Nobody liked me in my community,” Osborne said. “So I hit up Kyle, and we made a plan to get together and clean trash on the side of the road. We went out and did it for like five to six hours.”
Osborne got involved with the trash pickup because he felt like he had to in order to make up for the messages from his phone and his past actions with his friends in Clearwood. But after the first time they cleaned up the road, Osborne expressed interest in helping out again, which surprised Scharpf.
“That kind of spoke to me a lot. I wasn’t gonna give up on him. I knew he was ready to change and ready to want something different,” Scharpf said.
Langton, a 2024 Rainier High School graduate and longtime friend of Osborne’s, was inspired by how his friend was changing the trajectory of his life through community service.
“I used to party up at sunset. That was the go-to spot. But I found Christ, and I realized that we’ve done not too good things up there,” Langton said. “I saw what Kaleb was doing, and I was proud of that kid. I wanted to make a change in my community, so I hit up Kyle.”
As Osborne and Langton have matured through their community service, they have invited their friends to join them and helped them find their purpose.
“Our community is struggling. We just want to bring people together and get our teens off the streets and give them something productive,” Langton said. “I can see that these young kids are hurt. These kids are struggling. If I have to hear about one more overdose, one more funeral, one person getting a gun pulled on them, I don’t know how I could take it.”
Osborne added that cleaning up Bald Hill Road has brought him closer to Jesus Christ, as well, and that it has given him a new mindset in life.
“If I don’t work hard, I won’t be able to achieve [what I want]. I just have to engrave that into my head to keep on working and work and push through the hard parts,” he said. “There’s always going to be failures with everything, but we all learn from them. Those failures are either going to put you down or they’re going to bring you up. We’re trying to get our friends out here. A lot of them are at the skate park getting high every day and drinking every day, doing stuff they’re not supposed to.
“There has to be some sort of discipline. There has to be some sort of motivation to come out and get better,” Osborne continued. “Cleaning litter and the good feeling you feel after that is so humbling. It brings you up. If we have a couple more friends or people around the community that are having a hard time being in their community and they want to change, come out here and clean some trash with us.”
Together, the three and other volunteers have filled four trailers full of trash they’ve picked up and have cleaned over 5 miles of the road. They recently partnered with We Love Rainier WA to extend their efforts into the Rainier and Vail communities. Scharpf said he hopes the partnership and growing recognition on social media leads to more opportunities for them to clean the surrounding areas in more ways than one, including building a nonprofit organization.
“I want to have a van and a trailer and have all the equipment to haul a whole crew to go out wherever in the community for whatever. If a ranch needs tansy pulled, we could do that. Bald Hill is the mission, but we want to rally up as many troops as we can and get a small army to tackle projects and get more community involvement. The three of us can get a lot done, but if it could be 30 or 300 of us, imagine the force that we could make within the community.”
Osborne said the recent Yelm Community Schools cuts to extracurricular activities will drive youth into making poor decisions and following the wrong path. He hopes to be a leader for kids his age through this community endeavor.
“Yelm’s school district has turned a blind eye on us and has taken away a lot of the stuff that took us out of bad situations,” he said. “As they’re taking it away, the only thing that will happen is the crime rate will grow in our town. Teens will stay irresponsible. They won’t take accountability for what they’re doing. I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve been a part of it. I want to be looked at in a way where I can help my community grow and become a better person and be a leader for my youth.”
Scharpf said his opinion of the local youth grew from tarnished to sympathetic upon meeting and talking with Osborne and Langton, and he is on board with their mission.
“I didn’t really realize how bad it was for these kids. When I started doing this, I was approaching them and kind of running them off. After I started talking to a few of them, I kind of started feeling a little more of a kindred spirit to them,” Scharpf said. “It was such a bad, tarnished image, and these kids flipped it. If we could keep this momentum going, I really think this could snowball into something truly epic for these kids instead of what they’re faced with.”
