Rose Carroll crosses North Shannon Road to collect some roadside trash. It's near the North Ranch neighborhood where she lives, and she's been doing it four years now.

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Attention, Pima County: You've got a friend in North Ranch resident Rose Carroll.

She's the one responsible for keeping North Shannon Road between West Overton Road and West Lambert Lane free of litter. She also picks up recyclables along North Thornydale Road, but not the trash.

"There's just too much of that for me to carry," she said.

She does it all alone — an hour or two each day, six days a week — under nobody's direction and for no money, simply because it upsets her to see trash strewn along the roadway.

It takes her four days — Mondays through Thursdays — to cover Shannon Road. On Fridays and Saturdays, she tackles Thornydale Road.

"I hate to complain," she said, "but you cannot believe how people throw out trash. You just cannot believe how bad it looks along Shannon."

Her efforts began four years ago after retiring from Target, where she worked in the stockroom.

Carroll, 65, had worked for Target and, before that, Kmart since the early '70s. It was more than three decades of going to work at 2 or 3 a.m. to lift, stack and replenish the floor inventory before the store opened at 8 a.m.

Eventually, it took its toll on her knees and back, until she finally had to quit.

Physical therapists told her she had to exercise and gave her exercises to do at home.

She did them, and she started walking, a bit at a time. She found that the moving helped.

The pain diminished, "and I just kept on going," she said.

That "just-keep-going" attitude is what has helped her face difficulties all her life.

Carroll was widowed in 1968 when her husband was killed in Vietnam, leaving her with two preschoolers, Diane and Michael.

She was 25 then. Of those days, she says, simply, "You have your kids, and you keep going."

Once the children were old enough, she went to work for Kmart. In 1978, the family moved from San Diego to Sierra Vista, where they lived for eight years before moving to Tucson.

She may not be employed now, but she's still up and at 'em by 5 a.m. Mondays through Saturdays to walk and clean up the roadways on the Northwest Side.

She takes along a plastic trash bag, a walking stick and gloves. The stick is useful for helping pick up paper and plastic bags and avoiding the tiny stickers on prickly pear cactus. The gloves?

Well, you just never know what you're going to find, she said.

The other day she found broken glass — "the joggers could get hurt," she mused — and once, during the school year, she found three hypodermic needles "right where kids walk to the school bus."

Mostly she picks up paper bags, cardboard, vodka bottles, beer cans, cups and papers. Sometimes there are pieces of broken signs and strips of rubber tires.

Some days there is just so much refuse that "I have to leave some of the stuff because I can't carry it all," she said.

All the trash she picks up goes into her trash barrel; the recyclables into appropriate bins.

"I don't try to get money for them (the recyclables)," Carroll explained. She just wants them picked up.

"I'm a person who likes to recycle, and I want my recycle bin stuffed every Thursday when it gets picked up. And it is."

It can be tiring work, Carroll said.

"Sometimes I'm really huffing and puffing by the time I get home."

But she rests up and is ready to go again the next morning.

"I'm going to keep it up as long as my health lets me," she said. "It makes it (the area) look good. I just wish there wasn't so much trash."

Carroll is part of a small army of people in Pima County who care enough about the environment they call home to voluntarily spend time picking up other people's trash.

Most have signed up with the Pima County Department of Transportation's Adopt-a-Roadway program, but some, like Carroll, have not, said program Director Cynthia Henry.

Participants in the program must agree to clean their assigned stretch of road at least two times every six months. Of course, there are some people who go way beyond that, Henry said.

Henry doesn't know how many people like Carroll there are helping out on their own, but she said, "I wish we had more."

Has anyone ever commended Carroll on her efforts?

"I have had a couple people stop and thank me," she said. "That was nice."

We'd like to add our voice to those people:

Thank you, Rose Carroll.