It all started in March when Gina Pellegrino was walking her dog, named Bob Tucker, on the beach at La Jolla Shores.
“Honestly, my dog keeps me going,” Pellegrino said. She explained they walk the shore together a couple of times each day. One day, however, she noticed a beach toy and decided to pick it up for her 4-year-old granddaughter.
“I would find one little sand mold here or a little bucket,” she said. ”Then I just started noticing it a little more and it turned into a small container and then it turned into a big container.”
All of the toys she found were collected from a 1-mile stretch of La Jolla Shores. She would find a toy, ask around to make sure it didn't belong to anyone in the area or playing in the water, and if she couldn’t give it to anyone at the beach, she would bring it home.
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It wasn’t until June that she figured this may be a larger ordeal than toys for her favorite out-of-town visitor.
“Summer hit and it just exploded,” Pellegrino said. “To the point where it’s taken up most of my garage. I just had no idea the problem was as great as it was.”
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She started collecting shovels, balls, goggles, floats, boogie boards, toy tractors — you name it.
“San Diego has so much shoreline and if this is what I’m getting off of 1-mile stretch of beach, I can’t imagine if you were to add Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, Imperial Beach, Oceanside, Del Mar, I can’t imagine how much is really being left on our beaches and how much of it is ending up out in the ocean,” she said.
It’s why she feels like since she has become aware of all of the toys being left behind, especially the large number of ones that are made out of plastic, she has to do something about it.
Since she's become aware of all the toys being left behind, especially the large number of ones that are made out of plastic, she feels she has to do something about it.
Now that I know it's a problem, I don't even know how I stop.
Gina Pellegrino
“I’m not the only one collecting trash. I think I’m just the only one that’s actually started to bring the toys home,” she laughed.
Pellegrino admitted she has never tried to count the toys she has collected, but estimated that it is in the thousands. Now, she wants to find the toys a new life and new owners who will appreciate them.
She told NBC 7 that San Diego Junior Lifeguards agreed to take some of the toys for their annual event held for children with autism and their families, while other people have reached out wanting to come by and pick some for relatives of their own.
“People do have an awareness of problems with plastic, but don’t realize that they underestimate the massive amounts of beach toys, because, you know, again, this isn’t really considered trash,” Pellegrino said.
