PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — After 21 years, a back injury is what forced John Quirk to retire from his job as a UPS driver.
But that hasn’t stopped the Warwick resident from finding other ways to occupy his time.
12 News caught up with Quirk under the overpass near India Point Park, where he was picking up all sorts of trash left on the sidewalk.
“I was led here by the Holy Spirit and my heart,” he said. “I said, ‘just because I’m out of work and I don’t have any kind of job right now doesn’t mean I should just sit around. I should do something to help.'”
Carrying an orange Home Depot bucket and a trash picker, Quirk stops for every single piece of litter he comes across. When the bucket is full, he finds a trash can to dump it out so he can keep going.
The most common items Quirk said he finds include alcohol bottles, fast food wrappers and broken glass.
He does find some items that most people would consider out of the ordinary.
“I just found an Earth Day shirt,” he said while stuffing it into his bucket. “How weird is that?”
Quirk said he enjoys picking up trash because he loves giving back to the community.
“When I was working at UPS, I was making $70,000 to $80,000 a year … I was making a lot of money, but it didn’t make me feel good inside,” Quirk said. “I’m making nothing now and I’ve never felt better.”
“It just makes me feel so good, because for so long … I’d go through the motions every day like a rat race, going around and chasing money,” he continued.
And Quirk doesn’t stop at Providence.
The Rhode Island native said he travels all across the state to pick up trash, adding that he always drove by the “really bad spots” when he was a delivery driver.
“I know all of the spots in the state that are really bad because I was usually [driving through] them,” he explained.
Quirk told 12 News he just became the deacon at the Sacred Exchange Fellowship in East Greenwich. His strong connection with God, he said, is what motivates him each and every day.
