CHARLESTON, WV (WOWK) – Meet Ron Williams.

A man who goes around West Virginia’s Capitol City, picking up trash.

“It’s sort of a shame to have a nice town like Charleston, having trash everywhere… I didn’t like the appearance of it,” he said.

So he picks up the trash he finds.

Every day.

For ten years now.

“I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease in 2007,” he said. “And it’s painful. So I would walk a lot to alleviate the pain.”

Sometimes, walking upwards of ten miles a day.

“As I would walk, I would notice a lot of trash on the roads,” he said. “So I started picking up the trash.”

Williams takes pride in his city.

He wishes others would too.

“Sometimes I think pride and respect is being lost a little bit,” he said. “I still don’t understand how people can just throw things out of their car window or just drop things on the sidewalk while they’re walking; I can’t fathom it.”

Ron recently created a Facebook page ‘Charleston Ploggers’ to try to get the community involved.

“It’s been up there for about a week,” he said. “But people have been wanting equipment because they see me, so I’ve been handing out equipment now.”

The group now has 32 members.

It’s a start.

“If I can get the entire city to do that, we’ll keep this clean in a heartbeat,” he said. 

But it’s a heart that beats for more than the desire of a cleaner home town.

A few days ago, Ron found a man suffering on the street.

“We got him in the hospital,” he said. “He has sclerosis and HEP-C. Now we’re trying to find some help for him, once he gets out of the hospital.”

A citizen, a samaritan. One step, one piece, at a time.

If you want to check out William’s Facebook page, you can find it by searching ‘Charleston Ploggers’.