SAN ANTONIO – There is no need for street signs as Dianne Johnson walks through her Valencia neighborhood each day.
She, instead, looks for landmarks of a different kind — graffiti scrawled in all the usual places.
Most often, she says, she finds the unwelcome spray-painted scribbles on utility boxes, culverts and building walls.
“I sure didn’t like the way it downgrades the image of the neighborhood and it just looked terrible,” she said, vigorously shaking her head. “I didn’t want people driving by that stuff.”
About 20 years ago, the decades-long resident decided to do something about it.
Armed with latex gloves, a spray bottle, paper towels and special wipes, she began setting out to wipe out this type of crime.
She has continued tackling the smaller jobs on a regular basis.
The bigger graffiti abatement jobs, which often need to be removed with a power washer, are left to a city crew.
“Disregard for other people’s property, I don’t like that,” Johnson said.
Johnson is an unofficial neighborhood superhero of sorts; one you might call a grime fighter.
Some of her neighbors know her simply as “the graffiti lady.”
When asked about the moniker, Johnson bashfully dismissed it.
“They give me too much credit,” she said, laughing.
Her work, though, has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated.
“Phenomenal. No matter how small it is, she seems like she cleans it quite a bit,” said Officer Luming Ji with the San Antonio Police Department.
Ji, a SAFFE officer assigned to Valencia and other areas, acts as a law enforcement liaison to the neighborhood and often works closely with Johnson.
“She’s very active,” Ji said about Johnson. “She’s been a blessing for the community.”
Johnson’s work, it seems, is never-ending.
On a recent tour of the neighborhood, she identified several sites that she says she has cleaned repeatedly.
“The brick on that building has been hit probably four times or something,” Johnson said, pointing to it.
Still, she never gets tired.
Johnson said she will continue working to keep the neighborhood she has loved for nearly 45 years as clean as the day she moved in.