Everyday Heroes 2019: Louise McKeever

Nearly each morning for the last 15 years, Louise McKeever has walked around southern Crystal Lake picking up trash.

McKeever, 83, is affectionately known as “Garbage Lady” by school children, cyclists and area residents. Rain or shine, she can be spotted wearing her yellow reflective vest while walking along Golf Course Road and picking up garbage.

“She goes on a 2½- to 3-mile walking every morning picking up garbage in her neighborhood,” her son Scott McKeever said. “It goes back to when she was a little girl in Iowa in a small little town.”

Because there were no cars back then, she would walk to her father’s business.

“Her and her dad would pick up litter on the way there and on the way home,” Scott McKeever said. “She got that ingrained in herself, and when she moved here to Crystal Lake, she would walk to her grandchildren’s’ bus stop and pick up litter on the way to the bus stop and the way home from the bus stop.”

Eventually, she expanded her route and “has been doing that ever since,” Scott McKeever said. “It’s awesome. Everybody on the south side of Crystal Lake knows her.

People honk, all the runners know her, all the bus drivers know her, the kids at Indian Prairie write her thank you notes on Earth Day.”

Scott McKeever said his mother has stumbled across keys, syringes and shoes.

She drops off aluminum cans at Lake in the Hills President Russ Ruzanski’s home so he can get cash for them. She donates that cash to a local food pantry.

“I don’t like litter,” Louise McKeever said, adding that she enjoys getting out of the house each morning for fresh air and conversations with locals during her walk.