FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — With his bright orange bucket and garbage grabber, Rejean Lapierre is a fixture on the beach in Fort Lauderdale.
Every single morning, seven days a week for the last three years, Lapierre has been collecting trash off the sand and sidewalk along A-1-A, in-between Sunrise Boulevard and Oakland Park Boulevard.
“Three years ago in May, our rotary district, there’s someone who come up with the idea if we grab each of us, we are 1800 members in our district, we can do an impact, so I started and said hey that’s nice,” he said.
It started as a hobby that morphed into a passion to keep the beach clean.
“My wife says I do too much because I even take the cigarette butts,” Lapierre said. “People are just destroying our beautiful treasure. I said to people, I just want to keep my paradise a paradise.”
A heart procedure last month sidelined Lapierre for a bit, making him a little sad, but he’s hoping to get back into it full time again.
“It’s different, it’s like I do just the walk, the same walk, I see all those garbage, I always grab one or two in my hand,” he said. “It’s difficult, it’s a job that I love.”
An environmental activist and coastal crusader, Lapierre is making a difference, collecting one piece of litter at a time.
“It’s sad, but I have a lot of people who tell me thank you, thank you every morning, so it helps me continue,” he said.
Lapierre is hoping to get the all clear by doctors next month so that he can return to keeping the beach clean full-time, because unfortunately as we know too well, there’s always trash that pops up on our beaches.
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