Salvador Valle, a 22-year resident of the Rollingwood neighborhood, has found that his calling to clean up San Pablo Creek is reconnecting him with nature and helping him with his anxiety.
Every Thursday morning, Valle, 46, is down by the creek alone, trudging through weeds and mud to dig out decades of illegally dumped junk, slowly restoring water flow through the stretch of creek that runs along El Portal Avenue near Fordham Street.
He’s pulled out everything from blankets used by unhoused people to whole mattresses and electronics — items that clog up the waterway.
“That’s a bed right there but it looks like a rock,” he pointed out to Richmondside on a recent Thursday cleanup. “Here’s a white wall tire — that has to be one of the oldest tires I’ve seen here. Some bike equipment that’s really embedded in this tree. Look at all of this stuff. It’s so bad. I’ve cleaned this whole area. There was once a mound of triple-a batteries. There are a lot of them still buried.”
Valle grew up in San Francisco’s Mission District but moved to Rollingwood in 2000, forced out by the neighborhood’s gentrification.
“We had to move after our building was bought,” he recalled.
As a child, Valle said, he often would visit San Francisco’s McLaren Park and get lost in nature.
“I remember as a kid always playing in parks and getting lost there,” he said, explaining that spending time cleaning San Pablo Creek reminds him of those times. “I think that’s what happened to me down here. Like it was something that I just lost contact with for years and now I am back in nature.”
He said initially visited the creek hoping to enjoy a “little nature” for himself and then realized there were issues with trash and dumping there.
“I just felt I had to do something about this. I had to start speaking up,” he said.
Valle said his first creek volunteer experience was with the monthly Rollingwood community cleanup in 2024.
Meet Your Neighbor: San Pablo Creek volunteer
Who: Salvadore Valle
Neighborhood: Rollingwood, unincorporated Contra Costa County
Resident for: 22 years
He said: “I just felt I had to do something about this. I had to start speaking up.”
Join him: Join Salvador Valle’s San Pablo Creek cleanup on Thursdays at 9 a.m. in the parking lot of Rock Harbor Christian Fellowship Church at 2652 Church Lane, San Pablo.
Richmond is home to 40+ distinct neighborhoods, a fact that some residents have told us makes them feel disconnected to the city as a whole. This story is part of an occasional series to help Richmonders get to know their neighbors. Know someone we should feature? Email hello@richmondside.org.
Then he decided to join other cleanup efforts, in both Hercules and El Sobrante.
The positive energy he felt doing that moved him to head to the creek right next to his home. He also began documenting his efforts in a series of YouTube videos titled “My journey cleaning up San Pablo Creek” and by posting on Nextdoor. He is now involved in organizing monthly cleanups of Rheem Creek.
In many of the videos, Valle can be seen rummaging through the area’s greenery and stumbling upon trash as well as abandoned grocery carts and even unused headstones from a nearby cemetery that ended up in the creek.
“I had all this energy and I was kind of dealing with anxiety. I was like, ‘Oh man, I need to do something,’ ” he said, adding that he had dealt with alcohol issues. “It started with Rollingwood, then the creek area by the Fordham bridge where I worked my way down. I was here by myself for a while, a couple of months, before people started to notice.”
He recalled a moment when he first began cleaning up the creek in the area behind the Rock Christian Fellowship Church. As he was taking out some trash, the Rev. Port Wilburn asked what he was doing, thinking he was up to something illegal.
“We went back and forth and I told him I was cleaning,” Valle said. “He asked me if I was the guy who has been bringing all of the trash and I told him I have been cleaning it. He thanked me and told me I could do whatever back here behind the church. He gave me the green light.”
Wayne Earl, the senior pastor at Rock Christian Fellowship, said that he and Valle speak regularly called his work in the creek a “blessing to our community.”
“For Salvador, this isn’t just about cleaning a creek; he is investing time and effort into improving his hometown,” Earl told Richmondside in an email. “He frequently encounters unhoused residents living on the margins during his clean-up projects. He actively builds relationships with these individuals and encourages them to seek a better path forward.”
Since then, Valle said, he has been a constant presence at the creek and has been meeting unhoused people living there who now know him by name.
“I would start to clean around them and they would look at me and try to stay hidden,” he said.
Earl told Richmondside that Valle’s work has led to some unhoused people getting connected to social services.
In one instance, Valle ended up meeting an unhoused man who seemed to be experiencing mental health problems while walking around El Portal.
“I’d seen him for years around here,” Valle said. “So I asked him if he wanted to help and his eyes lit up. We got down and cleaned and he felt so good that he changed his life. He came back a few months later. He told me he got sober but was still dealing with homelessness. It touched my heart because you never know who you’re affecting.”
San Pablo honors citizen for creek cleanups
Valle’s efforts attracted the attention of San Pablo city officials. At the San Pablo City Council’s Sept. 2 meeting, he was honored with a city proclamation.
At the meeting Mayor Arturo Cruz described Valle as “a remarkable individual” who is making a meaningful impact on the community through his environmental advocacy.
“Mr. Salvador Valle has generously devoted countless volunteer hours each week over the past six months to cleaning and maintaining our local creek areas,” Cruz said.
Valle appreciates the public recognition but is hoping that the city and Contra Costa County can do more to keep the creeks clean. He buys his own trash bags or they’re donated by his neighbors but recently the city agreed to help out by hauling away the trash he pulls out of the creek.
Prior to receiving the city proclamation, Valle said he met with the San Pablo city manager, who agreed to give him access to all of the city’s creeks so he can continue his work.
At times, he said, he feels he’s giving the city free labor but he continues to be motivated by wanting to live in a clean neighborhood and give back to his community and future generations.
“For me, I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and trying to break generational curses,” he said. “I look at it like a story. What is the story you are leaving behind? Let me get started on something here and that’s what’s driving me right now. It’s not for money or acknowledgement. The work will show for itself.”
This story is part of an occasional series to help Richmonders get to know their neighbors. Know someone we should feature? Email hello@richmondside.org.
Thank you so much, Salvadore!! I hope other folks get inspired by what you’re doing-not only the cleaning part, but the positive interactions with unhoused people struggling to make their way in this challenging and often heartless society around us. You are awesome!