Jake Baron Was Tired Of Seeing Trash So He Did Something About It

EAST HAVEN, CT — Jake Baron is an “old soul” for an 8-year-old, his mom says. And his teacher described him as a natural born leader. So it’s not surprising that the boy took “matters into his own hands.”

Kris Emons Baron, her husband Steve and their son Jake live in the Lenox Street family home built by her great-grandparents almost a century ago. The house just off Main Street is very near a public transit stop, a fast food chicken place, a car shop and a factory. The debris dropped, dumped or blown lands along a fenceline right outside their home had gotten to the boy. He was tired of seeing it. And as he’s a helper — he visits with his very elderly neighbors and often picks up litter by their home — he wanted to do something. Right then.

“He actually started picking the trash in front of the neighbors’ house, they’re in their 90s. He visits them all the time. He walked over to pick up trash and stopped and said, ‘Mom, we gotta do something about this,’” Kris Baron told Patch. “I said, ‘OK, Jake. Let me get some bags.’”

And that’s how it started.

Jake Baron cleaned up the garbage.

And while he’d do it again if he has to, his mother said, “He hopes he doesn’t have to.”

Patch reached out to East Haven public works superintendent Charlie Coyle who immediately knew what the call was about.

“We were headed over there,” he said, noting that the accumulated dregs were, in part, what was left after the snow melted. But, he said, the area is a “problem.”

“I live a block away. It’s a constant thing. I’ve been having the guys clean that on a regular basis but we can’t be out there five days a week," Coyle said. "Still, it’s sad that people throw trash. It’s just a sad thing.”

Coyle, it turns out, knows Kris Emons Baron’s parents and grandparents. He called her.

“I told her to thank her son for me,” Coyle told Patch, adding Jake’s a “good kid.” But noted that the young boy should not have to be the one to pick up the detritus on the street. He was sending crews out.

“Jake is probably the most reasonable and sensitive kid I've ever met. He cares about his people, about his classmates,” Kris Emons Baron said about her son. “We’re very proud of Jake.”

When she told her son that the Facebook post she shared on The Good Things About East Haven community page had more than 500 ‘likes,’ he asked: “Did the mayor see it?”

He did.

Mayor Joseph A. Carfora’s office phoned his mother. Carfora wants to send Jake a thank-you. And, he told Patch that Jake Baron's efforts did not go unseen.

“The families in East Haven are great," Carfora said. "This young man's ambition to improve his community for others does not go unnoticed. The town of East Haven recognizes his kindness and thanks him for his community service.”

Great job, Jake!