Soap, scrubbing leads to girl, 7, cleaning graffiti
Taylor Hutchinson, 7, in front, and Shyanee Knowles, 10, both of Moses Lake, work to remove graffiti tags on their neighborhood's mailbox Tuesday morning.
MOSES LAKE - Talk about taking back the streets.
When 7-year-old Taylor Hutchinson, of Moses Lake, saw graffiti sprawled all over her neighborhood's mailboxes last week, she took matters into her own hands. Literally.
Armed with Brillo pads and a bowl of soapy water, Hutchinson spent hours in the mid-day heat cleaning off the spray-painted eyesores off Patton Boulevard.
"I just wanted to help my community," she said.
Her mother, Erin Diebel, said she was amazed at her daughter's initiative.
"She just thought of it all on her own," Diebel said.
Both mother and daughter didn't like the graffiti on the mailboxes, but marveled when Hutchinson went outside, rolled up her sleeves and applied some old-fashioned elbow grease.
"We couldn't be more proud," Hutchinson's father Graham Hutchinson said. "She even got other kids out from the neighborhood helping."
Yesterday, neighbor Shyanee Knowles, 10, stood alongside Hutchinson, scrubbing in harmony.
As of Tuesday, their project is more than half complete. A neighbor took note of Hutchinson's good deeds and donated paint to cover up the sprayed-on tags quicker.
Hutchinson accepted, saying she was really looking forward to start painting.
Her parents joked that she might branch out and clean other graffiti in the former Larson Air Force Base area.
And Hutchinson said she wouldn't mind. Even if the mailbox outside her home were to receive more graffiti, it would undoubtedly not phase her.
"I'd just do it again," she said with a chirp, not missing a beat with her scrub brush.
This isn't the first thing she's done to help beautify the community. Whenever out on a walk, the 7-year-old takes a plastic bag with her to clean up trash, her mother said.