Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Kylie Haege spent every morning and every evening picking up and disposing of garbage left by visitors, and placing items left behind on a picnic table she set up as Lost-and-Found.

HOUGHTON — Twelve-year-old Kylie Haege and her mom, Julie, spent the summer at the city of Houghton RV Park. What Kylie could not help but notice was the number of items and the amount of trash, left at the city’s Kestner Waterfront Park. Trash including empty drink containers, food containers, and discarded food that attracted seagulls to an area already known for the boldness of the birds at picnic areas. Kylie, without talking to anyone first, decided to do something that would make a difference.

Since the Haeges set up their RV in the park in May, Kylie made it a point to begin every morning by quietly policing the recreation area to pick up the items and dispose of them.

“I would see this young girl take a plastic bag and go off into the park, down to the bathing beach, then into the Chutes and Ladders area, and then come back,” said RV co-host, Duffy Lepisto.

Kylie said the daily task began because she likes visiting beaches. Along her morning walk, she said, if she saw something laying on the ground, she picked it up. If it was discarded trash, she put it in the nearby trash barrels.

“It wasn’t that much of a chore,” said Kylie. “I just took a trash bag down. I’d find odd stuff: clothing, socks, shoes — all over.”

Kylie said she did not police the RV park area, because the residents and visitors kept it clean themselves. The waterfront area was trashed mostly by college-age people, she said.

Lepisto said that Kylie had a picnic table full of items she had collected and displayed for the items’ owners, adding that eventually, Kylie began making her rounds in the morning, then again in the evening.

Kylie and Julie Haege
A picnic table of Lost-and-Found items that 12-year-old Kylie Haege collects, on average, in a week at the city of Houghton’s Kestner Waterfront Park .

Initially, Kylie brought the recovered items to the park’s store near the pavilion area, but soon discovered the items she turned in were just thrown away.

“I used to bring bags of stuff to the park store for Lost and Found,” said Kylie. “They would literally not care. I found really expensive sunglasses, and a pair Doc Martins, and a lot of shoes. They just threw them away.”

Kylie’s mom, Julie, said she is super proud of her daughter.

“She did this of her own accord,” she said.

“What Kylie did all summer effects the whole city of Houghton,” Lepisto said, “the visitors and even the non-visitors. Here there is a person, a young gal, who’s going out of her way of her own accord to keep the space clean.”

In some instances, said Lepisto, the people who left or lost the items will return to claim or to find them. But in the instances they do not return within 24 hours, Kylie was allowed to keep the recovered items and do what she wanted with them, or donate them to a charity.

“Even at the RV Park,”they leave something at the site,” Lepisto said. “We’d put in the office for a while; nobody ever comes back for that stuff. It would have to be pretty important, like a camera or a wallet, or something like that.”

Kylie said she generally put the unclaimed items in a trash bag and brought them to Goodwill.