All heart and elbow grease, too

Volunteers scrub Sanders Beach wall to remove graffiti

COEUR d’ALENE — When Angie Frank saw the Facebook post that showed graffiti on the wall on Sanders Beach Tuesday, she got mad.

Then, she did something about it.

She called her friend, Kat, and they headed to the beautiful Lake Coeur d’Alene site about a half mile east of Tubbs Hill.

“This is unacceptable to me,” Frank said as she and a handful of volunteers labored to remove profanities directed at police.

Kat, using a brush and a mixture of cleaning agents, shook her head.

“My friend sent me a picture of this atrocity, and asked, ‘Can you help me scrub this off?’ I said, ‘Sure, when?’” said Kat, who declined to give her last name.

“Now,” Frank answered.

“Come get me,” Kat responded.

Kat said she was offended by the graffiti done with what appeared to be white spray paint.

“For one, it’s our hometown,” she said. “For another, I support our police department. They’re out there on the front lines doing what nobody else wants to do.

“For someone to put that up here, it’s very disrespectful,” Kat said.

Bill Greenwood, city parks and recreation director, heard about the graffiti late Tuesday, so crews couldn’t get to it that day. But they did finish removing it with a pressure washer Wednesday.

In general, the city has a 24-hour window to remove graffiti from public property.

“People don’t normally see it,” Greenwood said. “Our staff is Johnny on the spot.”

The city has had instances of graffiti on bathroom walls, basketball courts and even the rocks on Tubbs Hill.

“It happens,” Greenwood said. “Sometimes not this bad.”

If the suspects are caught and they are juveniles, the city tries to have them perform community service. But the juveniles often refuse to show up and it’s difficult to enforce, Greenwood said.

Still, he was pleased to see such dedicated volunteers in action Tuesday.

“The volunteerism here, the ownership, I don’t know if anybody else in the community has that sort of citizenry,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

People who saw a picture of the graffiti on Facebook responded angrily.

“What is wrong with people!!!!”

“These individuals have no common decency for children and that I don’t take lightly.”

Joshua Dahlstrom and sons Meshach and Kydan joined the cleanup effort. They were at Sanders for a Boy Scout swimming activity.

“As Scouts, we do a good turn,” Joshua Dahlstrom said. “When we saw that these ladies were doing such hard work, we wanted to come over and help.”

He said he actually feels bad for the person responsible for the vandalism “and for the people who have to see the mistake that they made.”

“I’m willing to do the work to repair the mistake that someone else made,” he said.

While it likely took the vandals about a minute to do the damage, the removal took a few hours.

“It’s kind of hard,” Kydan Dahlstrom said.

Volunteers tried Dawn detergent, Simply Green, vinegar and nail polish remover. Gradually, the words faded away.

“A combination of all of it,” Kat said. “And determination.”

“It’s more elbow grease than it is anything else,” Angie Frank added.