If you see a beautiful woman with a fish tail instead of legs, you can call that woman a mermaid — a mythical creature that lives in the ocean. ... Mermaid means "maid of the sea," from mere, "sea" in Middle English, according to Google.

South End Rowing Club member and Aquatic Park & Pier fan Nancy Luna is a mermaid in her other life. Inspired by David McGuire’s Shark Stewards, she decided to do a beach clean-up. At first, it was a one off event. But everyone loved it so much and people kept asking Nancy when the next beach clean-up would be, and it grew organically from there…

“I think it was that exact moment when I saw the pipe that I realized how important restoring this area was to the City. That’s when it really resonated with me. This Pier is not just mine; it belongs to everyone. I didn’t want to see this special piece of San Francisco falling apart. I thought that someone needs to take action and I decided that someone might have to be me,” remembers Carol.

Read on to hear how this octogenarian is igniting change for San Francisco.

Humans have been telling stories throughout history, even before the first hieroglyphics appeared. Those first oral stories were a way of connecting to one another, by finding fragments of ourselves in each other. This helped us to find common ground and shared understanding.