About five years ago, while I was having lunch at a local restaurant, the waitress, named Abigail Frost, buttonholed me. She’d tried to call me some time back to talk about an organization she had started, she said, something called the Save the Maumee Grassroots Organization, but I never called her back.

“Sorry” was about all I could say, but talk and I’ll listen.

It seems Frost had grown up near the Maumee and loved the river, so she started an organization to clean it up.

Then came the kicker. The organization had one member: Frost herself. It had no money, and it wasn’t an official non-profit, so raising money was hard. But this one waitress was going to get that river cleaned up, one way or another.

The whole thing sounded a little crazy, but that’s the way things get done. One person gets an idea and hangs on like a Gila monster, refusing to let go.

Frost started with nothing but family members and friends, leaning on them to show up along the river at Hosey Dam on Anthony Boulevard one spring day and pick up all the trash along a mile and a half of riverbank.

Six years down the line, Frost, who is now named King, is organizing her sixth river cleanup, scheduled to take place April 17, starting at Anthony Boulevard and Niagara Drive.

In the past five years, King and the volunteers she has rallied have hauled a conservatively estimated nine tons of trash, tires and other debris away from the river. King has mooched hundreds of pounds of native grass seed from various businesses and organizations and planted it along the banks of the river. She’s also wangled tons of matting designed to prevent erosion.

Last year, 267 volunteers showed up to help with the cleanup, and this year King is hoping for even more. Not only is she looking for volunteers, but she’s put out a call for teams of what she calls big, burly people with trucks, shovels, pull chains and cameras to tackle specific spots along the river that have heavy concentrations of trash, including old refrigerators.

And six years down the line, the trash keeps accumulating, and King continues to be the only person regularly pushing the cleanup of the Maumee.

“The city needs a river janitor position,” King said. It needs to identify concentrations of trash along the rivers and clean them up, and it needs to identify ditches and streams that are clogged with refuse and serve as trash feeders for the rivers, she said.

“It should be their job, but until they do it, I’ll do it,” she said.

“I wish it was my job,” King said. “I wish I got paid. I could accomplish a lot.”

But King doesn’t get paid, not a red cent. So she works a regular job and raises a family and runs the Save the Maumee Grassroots Organization on the side, scrounging donations of shovels and trash bags and seed and erosion mats and plants and giant trash bins and anything else needed for the annual cleanup.

As time has passed, King has accumulated a few regular volunteers who help publicize the river cleanup efforts and handle other tasks, but King remains in charge.

I don’t know how many people recognize that a particular stretch of the Maumee gets cleaned up every year, but I suspect few people recognize that King is the one who started it and keeps it going.

In talking to King about the coming cleanup, I let my cynical side emerge.

Yeah, I said, the government taxes us and raises money and then hires employees who tell us that various things are not their job. If you really want something done, it’s the people you need to turn to.

King has been turning to people for six years now, and every year, hundreds have responded.

This year’s cleanup starts at 11 a.m. April 17. Shovels and trash bags will be provided, but King asks that people bring their own shovels and heavy trash bags if they have them, as well as boots and gloves.

Check out blog.savemaumee.org for information about the organization.