Anti-litter campaign raises the bar for community service

pick up litter?”

He even picks up gum, he said, “because I don’t want to step on gum.” Golden Rule 101.

“When I started doing this, I was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning,” he said.

Hegrew up poor and anxious,always feeling like a fringecharacter. He had a quirkyside that didn’t synch withthe traditional law schoolplan. Preparing for a legalcareer, he shadowed probationofficers, public defenders,a juvenile court judge and beganmentoring youth who themselveswere fringe kids.

He was getting closer to his calling.

“I wanted to do good, and I wasn’t sure I could do that in a courtroom,” he said. “A lot of people who have the biggest impact don’t do everything by the book. I didn’t have that recipe anyway. But if you had told me five years ago I would be picking up litter while waiting for my bar exam results, I’d have said, ‘No way.’ ”

It happened the way so many things happen in life.

“I realized I needed to get outdoors early in the day because as soon as I stepped outside, I felt a release,” he said.

His wife’s grandmother died, and in her basement was a litter grabber. He took it for a little stroll.

“I started feeling a connection to this neighborhood. I said, ‘OK, I’m going to pick up a bag a day for a week.’ I really enjoyed it. So I said, ‘I’m going to do this for 30 days,’ then it was every morning while I was studying, and it’s been five and a half months now, pretty much every day. I may not pass the bar exam, but at least my neighborhood will be cleaner. And I’m the healthiest and happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”

Ifound myself grinning as mylittle metal hand did the pinchingfor me, from paper thathad been ground into the sidewalkto cigarette butts. It pluckedcandy wrappers from bushes,squeezed empty cans andbottles, even held onto cellophane.My bag began to fill butthe gripper, amazingly, distributedthe weight so my armdidn’t get tired.

Lukas has equipped some other friends with grippers and grabbers — the cost is less than $20 — and is building a presence to hook more people on the high of picking up litter. He has a presence on social media as “bagsnblocks” and answers to that @gmail and bagsnblocks.org. In that way, he is following in the footsteps of Pittsburgh’s venerable Mr. Litterman, Boris Weinstein, now 85 and disabled by a recent half-hip replacement.

Mr. Weinstein said he is going through withdrawal from the litter rounds he used to make. He also organized cleanup groups throughout the region.

“You might say I’m shelved,” Mr. Weinstein said. “I want to pick up litter. I miss it terribly. I miss the connection with people. It was one of the passions of my life. I’ve been waiting for someone” to take the baton.

“I like the idea of improving a place every day,” Lukas said. “Everything we do impacts something else.”

He learned Friday that he had not passed the bar. I think he raised it instead.