About 25 Hillcrest Clean T.E.A.M. volunteers met last Sunday at the San Diego LGBT Community Center for its seasonal clean up along University Avenue, following Nightmare on Normal Street, The Center’s annual Halloween bash.

The group spent several hours picking up Halloween costume fragments, plastic jewelry, cups, fliers, food wrappers, and a near-infinite collection of cigarette butts along Hillcrest’s main thoroughfare and side streets. It’s a task the Hillcrest Clean T.E.A.M. has accomplished since 2005, when former resident Cathy Lee initiated the clean up.

“I wanted to be part of this community,” Lee said. “So I asked my friends Ann Garwood and Nancy Moors, who manage the HillQuest Web site, what the community needed. They said, ‘cleaner streets.’”

At the time, the city had cut funds to the neighborhood’s trash collection, and the garbage “just started piling up,” she said.

The Hillcrest Clean T.E.A.M. meets every few months, often in conjunction with a major event or holiday that produces a lot of refuse. The group not only cleans the streets but also tackles neighborhood issues, such as graffiti and abandoned shopping carts, problems that local residents often bring up at Hillcrest Town Council, which oversees the Hillcrest Clean T.E.A.M., Garwood said.

The Center donated $700 to the group for its effort.

Lee, who now lives in San Jose, was in town to visit her partner, resident Grace Gamalong, and decided to join the group effort on Sunday.

“I just happen to be here on vacation,” she said, holding a dustpan while Gamalong swept dried leaves and candy wrappers into it.

“I started doing it to help Cathy out,” said Gamalong, who’s been volunteering since the group started. “But after we clean up and we walk through the neighborhood, it’s like, ‘Wow, this looks really great,’”

Normon Jackson, 37, of Hillcrest, started volunteering for the group last July during its post-Pride clean up.

“I kind of clean up on my own around the neighborhood. I just think it’s important to get involved and give back to the community,” Jackson said. “And this is, like, an immediate thing, where you see a beautification of the neighborhood,” he said.

Sprucing the place up struck Nick Berry, 51, Bankers Hill resident, as a good idea too. He was already cleaning local canyons in his spare time, so when he joined the Hillcrest Clean T.E.A.M. about a year ago, it was a near perfect match.

“I love this neighborhood, so I thought why not volunteer?” Berry said.

Normal Heights resident Dan Sotoberg, 53, echoed the sentiment. “I spend so much time here that I care deeply about the neighborhood,” said Sotoberg, who started volunteering for the group about two years ago.

“I also think the place needs to be taken care of, and I want to do my part in any way I can.”

The group is 100 percent volunteer run and pays for its equipment through donations, from more than a dozen local Hillcrest businesses and nonprofit organizations, including Ace Hardware, Crest Café and San Diego LGBT Pride, Gamalong said.

Gossip Grill owner Chris Shaw donated a free drink to each volunteer for the clean up on Sunday.

“Every time they do it, Hillcrest sparkles. They really pay attention to detail as far as getting the weeds out of the sidewalks and gutters and things that normal cleaning services don’t do. They do such a great job for the neighborhood,” Shaw said.

Gamalong says the group needs “all the volunteers it can get.” Those interested in volunteering can attend meetings held on the second and fourth Thursday of each month at Bamboo Lounge and T-Deli.

“The feeling of doing this work is just indescribable really. It’s really just about giving back,” Lee added.