Early on Saturday morning in Pacific Beach, Vi Nguyen spotted a beer can under Crystal Pier.
It reminded her of the hundreds of other beer cans she had picked up along San Diego’s coastline over the last seven years.
“It's kind of weird but people, like, just leave everything on the beach, like unopened alcohol,” she said. “I would not drink it because I don't drink, but I made vinegar out of it because you can just take alcohol and ferment it, you know? And then I use it to clean.”
Nguyen crushed the can’s sides with her trash picking stick and dumped it in the clear bag she had been filling.
She has cleared San Diego’s sandy beaches of thousands of plastic bags, bottles, beach toys, office supplies and clothing. What’s salvageable, she reuses or donates. From August 2019 to November 2022, she filled more than 730 bags “of ocean-bound plastic” and salvaged nearly 2,000 items, according to her blog, Dr. Plastic Picker.
“I used to count the number of cans I got,” she said. “There's so many different ways to pick up trash. There's an infinite amount of trash, like, and it just kind of informs how I think of life now.”
Nguyen is a full-time pediatrician in Otay Mesa. She said burnout made her question her career trajectory. And when one of her patients died of brain cancer, “it broke me that summer.”
That summer, she said, a lot of protesting around climate change was happening. She thought of her late patient.
“She loved the beach,” said Nguyen. “I said, you know what? I can give a decade (of advocacy).”
Finding cigarette butts and tiny snack bag corners on the vast sandy beaches has led her to do bigger climate advocacy work.
Nguyen has served on numerous environmental health committees, including the Climate Action Campaign and the American Academy of Pediatrics. She also cofounded San Diego Pediatricians for Clean Air, a loose coalition of doctors advocating for children with asthma that is now known as San Diego Physicians for Clean Air.
With UC San Diego, Kaiser Permanente and the San Diego Foundation, she also helped organize San Diego’s Heat and Human Health Summit, an annual event that brings together scientists, doctors and lawmakers to discuss the impacts of extreme heat in the face of climate change and what can be done to protect the public.
“We talk about scary things like extreme heat and cardiac death … but realizing how bad it is, we're only going to get through this if we're connected,” said Nguyen. “I'm super scared too, but I’m not because I'm like, I'm doing stuff. My job is not to fix the climate crisis. My job is to do my part.”
Climate change is increasingly posing serious threats to life in San Diego County and across the world. Now more than ever, the rapidly changing climate calls for a wide range of solutions, large and subtle, to protect and restore the environment.
Nguyen said, if you’re feeling overwhelmed about how to start, just “pick your spot.”
“Pick the spot and you will save what you love,” she said. “You will fight for what you love, right? And that is why I am so, fight for San Diego.”
What's your story?
KPBS is exploring the small and large ways residents, local governments, nonprofits and anyone else in San Diego and Imperial counties are working on solutions for protecting our communities from climate change.
Solutions can look like anything from residents turning a former landfill into a blooming native garden to the Port of San Diego helping increase biodiversity in Chula Vista with hundreds of oyster castles.
How are you “fighting for the community you love?” Do you pick up trash? Take public transit? Tell us about how you are doing your part for the planet. You can also nominate someone.
Enter your answers below or give us a call at (619) 452-0228 and leave a message. Leave your contact information if you’re open to participating in a story about climate solutions.
_
