Unsung hero: Conrad Tetrault did his best to keep the highways clean ‘as a crew of one’
For five years, Conrad Tetrault picked up trash along a freeway because one day he decided he didn’t like the way it looked with all that rubbish there.
“It was just a dump,” he recalled.
So on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for about 90 minutes each day, the Costa Mesa resident donned a bright yellow safety vest, safety goggles, gloves and a white helmet to do the job around the Bear Street underpass of the 73 toll road.
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Editor’s note: This is an installment of Unsung Heroes, a new annual feature that highlights otherwise overlooked members of the community.
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Bag and picker in hand, he cleaned up the offramps and onramps, as well as the underpass.
Tetrault didn’t have to travel far to get there. He lives nearby, in the Mesa North neighborhood.
The cleaning feat was particularly remarkable considering Tetrault’s age. He turned 87 on Thursday. Health problems forced him to end the effort this month.
He got to feeling easily fatigued, not having the energy anymore to make those offramps and onramps the best they could be.
“I’m a crew of one,” Tetrault proudly noted in an interview. “I’m always just going out by myself.”
Tetrault, a Rhode Island native whose accent is still apparent, is a retired stockbroker. He left the business at age 75 as the oldest worker at his firm.
He graduated from the University of Notre Dame, where he competed in track and cross country, and served in the Air Force during the Korean War.
Tetrault said sometimes people would stop and thank him. A host of others, he thought, probably figured he was out there for mandatory community service.
“I didn’t tell them,” he joked. “Kept ‘em guessing.”
Tetrault routinely found fast-food wrappers and plastic bottles. He hated seeing cigarette butts.
Sometimes he uncovered a lost driver’s license. When he did, he’d mail it back to the owner. Some responded and thanked him.
“They didn’t know how the license got out on the ramp,” Tetrault said.
He also found a lot of plastic bags. He figures with the new state law, there won’t be as many of those anymore.
Tetrault went about his work almost anonymously. Though, because he did his work through the state’s Adopt-A-Highway program, he did get his name on a pair of highway signs.
The signs meant a lot to him. So much so that in 2012, a photo of him next to one of them made the cover of the family Christmas card. Inside, the card reads, “Keep the highways clean, my friend.”
Twitter: @BradleyZint
