Earth Week '10 - One Student's Efforts

April 22, 2010 at 7:22am by Marianne Bartman

Earth Week ’10 – One Student’s Efforts to Help the Environment

Grace Best-Devereux, daughter of Igor Best-Devereux and Cynthia Conner of Salt Lake City, a sophomore at Judge Memorial Catholic High School, spent a portion of her spring break doing her part to help the environment.

Grace and her family were on an annual trip to visit Grace’s grandfather who lives in Hobe Sound, Florida. One day, Grace, along with her mom and younger brother, Jim, took a ferry over to the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge and spent five hours picking up trash. Lots and lots of trash.

“We just decided one day to see what we could do to help clean up,” said Grace. “We picked up some pretty random stuff, like really long fishing nets and a box of hundreds of forks. It’s crazy what people leave behind.”

Grace, who plays lacrosse for the Judge Lady Bulldogs and also rides horses, previously attended The Madeleine Choir School before enrolling at Judge. “Judge is such a great school,” she said. “I’m really happy I made the choice to come here.”

In recognition of her generous act, Grace was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation by Loblolly in Hobe Sound, “for beach clean up in conjunction with The Hobe Sound Nature Center and The Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge.”

But it wasn’t the recognition Grace was after. As she put it, “I know the Wildlife Refuge has a lot of birds and I hated to think of them being exposed to all the trash.”

This was the second year that Grace completed this special spring break project.

“I plan to do it for as long as I can, even after I graduate from high school and college. We’ve all got to do something, even if it is something as simple as this. We can all make a difference for our environment.”

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