On the grassy shoulder of northbound I-5 near Mount Vernon last week, 15-year-old Bryce Hoefer bent down to pick up what must have been his zillionth piece of trash this summer – an envelope.
In his summer job as a litterbug zapper for the state Department of Ecology, he and other members of his youth crew have picked up all sorts of stuff, including lots of things he’d rather not mention.
They have picked up bags, bottles, photographs and wheel covers. They’ve found license plates, wallets and credit cards. And there are many, many stray pieces of paper.
Hoefer opened the envelope. It had a name and address on it. To him, it looked like a receipt. He tucked it in his fanny pack, kept working and forgot about it.
However, inside the envelope was a check for enough money to buy him his first car or to finance a couple of years of college at Western Washington University. It was for $10,000.
Two days later, when members of his crew were talking excitedly about finding a one-dollar bill and a five-dollar bill, Hoefer remembered the envelope. He pulled it out and handed it to his boss, Patrick Donovan.
“He didn’t think anything of it. He didn’t think it was real,” said Donovan, Skagit County youth cleanup crew chief. “I informed him that yes, it was real.”
Donovan, 23, just graduated from Western with a degree in, appropriately enough, environmental economics.
“It’s obviously the most valuable thing we’ve found,” said Donovan, a Seattle resident. “There’s different departments for strange things you find on the side of the road, but as far as money goes, this takes the cake.”
Donovan inspected the check, which was issued by Everett developer Barclays North Inc. He called them right away.
“I was wondering, first off, how you go about losing a check for $10,000,” Donovan said. “I know I’d be holding on to that pretty tight if it was mine.”
The check belonged to one of Barclays subcontractors, company vice president David Toyer said.
When he called, Donovan learned the check had been on the subcontractor’s dashboard and had blown out of an open sunroof.
The folks at Barclays had already canceled the check, but were relieved it had been found. They told Donovan to send it back.
“I went to go mail it and decided it had already been lost once, and it would be better to take it,” Donovan said. “It’s on my way home, so I hand-delivered it to them. The whole crew wanted to make sure it got back to the right person.”
Hoefer, who said he likes helping the environment and getting paid for it, now picks up litter even when he’s not at work.
In his state-issue bright orange T-shirt, safety glasses, hard hat and heavy gloves, Hoefer, of Sedro-Woolley, has spent his summer the same way about 400 other teenagers statewide have.
For about $7.30 an hour, they pick up trash along the road in the rain and the sun and the not-so-gentle breeze of passing semitrucks.
“It’s a fun atmosphere,” he said. “Picking up trash is not too hard, and the crew is fun to be around.”
Finding the $10,000 check isn’t really that big a deal, he said. After all, it’s not like it was cash.
“I wasn’t incredibly wowed by it,” he said. “But it was pretty cool.”
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