SAN FRANCISCO – OUTER RICHMOND DISTRICT

Liz Heidhues – Guest Blogger – 3.16.2025

The proverb “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” did not hold true for Donna the Drain.

For several days, a blight of shoes and plastic bags had been discarded at the corner where Donna the Drain is located. No one had poked through the pile to take away anything at all.

The constant rain over the last week had turned the pile of shoes and bags into a sodden mess. It was polluting the corner where I, as an SFPUC volunteer, have kept Donna the Drain free of pollutants and trash since 2017.

I noticed the ugly mess as I walked home from my class at Tat Wong Kung Fu Academy on Tuesday. But I waited two days before reporting it to the City.

This morning as I hustled down the hill towards St. Thomas the Apostle Church for Sunday service, I saw a miracle had transpired. The trash was gone! The corner was clean! The upshot. I wouldn’t have to clean it myself and lug it up our steep hill to our trash can.

Who had performed this miracle? A DPW open bed truck, carrying an assortment of discarded battered possessions – broken chairs, ladders, an ironing board and more – was pulling up to the corner. A smiling city worker jumped out of the driver’s seat. “I’m so glad to see you,” I said.

We greeted one another as he pulled an iPad out of his pocket. The City worker, who undoubtedly sees plenty of trash, told me, “I wouldn’t want to see this on my corner either.” He then pulled up the screen shot of the ‘X’ post I had transmitted to ‘311’ three days earlier. His up to date technology had chronicled a record of my communication. The City had missed its deadline of responding within 48 hours but it had taken action. The City came out. I was gratified by the City’s high level of service.

Out here in the countryside, junk abandoned on the corners often lingers for days. When the City worker told me “We rarely get calls from people out here”, not only was he explaining why DPW was late in responding, he was also affirming we live by the old proverb in my west side neighborhood. What we consider worthless could be highly prized by someone else.

Top photo: Local resident Elizabeth Heidhues is pictured in front of the drain she tends to as part of the city’s Adopt a Drain program, at the intersection of Anza Street and 40th Avenue, in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond neighborhood. Charles Russo/SFGATE

Liz Heidhues has been caring for Donna the drain since 2017, as soon as she saw the Adopt a Drain program advertised on a San Francisco Public Utilities Commission calendar she picked up from a local store. As a runner and a cyclist without a car, she said she was always encountering flooded intersections, so her motivation to adopt the drain was to keep her intersection from becoming flooded. She looked online and saw the drain on her corner was available, and she’s been caring for it ever since. https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Adopt-a-Drain-program-SF-16641794.php