“People think I just work by myself, but I feel like the whole community is involved, we work together. We have thousands of volunteers! Well, maybe hundreds…”

Sara Melnicoff shows up, miraculously, on time. I smile as the white truck arrives on the dot of noon. She points to her smart phone, so I know she’s on it.

She’s always on it. Well, almost always. And then every day, often when most of the world is still asleep, somewhere in the vicinity of Mill Creek, there is a woman with phone in hand gauging the condition of the Parkway, the Creek, and other noteworthy Moab trailways. “My life and my work are the same thing,” she says, “and I’m blessed and cursed!”

How to describe Moab Solutions, the brainchild of Melnicoff and her beloved partner David Morgan, who tragically passed away in 2013 - check the incredibly informative website – moab-solutions.org -“small changes over time, one solution at a time, patience, maintenance, consistency, compassion.” (Hint: this is not a zero-sum game.)

At age 20 Moab Solutions is three pronged, a triple threat of activities starting with emergency assistance for the homeless and disadvantaged, moving on to recycling, and finishing with trail cleanup and respect for the land (which is actually where it started). Rehabilitate, re-use, respect: Repeat, endlessly.

You might expect Solutions, a singularly peripatetic entity, to cadge a handful of different names, and it does: Common Thread 2024 refers to this year’s annual springtime Easter Jeep Safari, and Moab Solutions has carved a palpable presence there.

By the time you read this Moab’s Jeep Week will have happened and Solutions’ focus will have been on Potato Salad Hill, a kind of icon and favored hangout during jeep week. Moab Solutions does cleanup, education, recycling, and everything you would expect, handling up to 400 pounds of recycling in a single day, for example.

“It’s getting easier every year,” Melnicoff says. The Jeepers pitch in for the greater good and help with cleanup. There is an annual article about Common Thread in the Easter Jeep Safari Magazine (see page 111); an alliance has been forged.

The rehabilitation piece was an outgrowth of trail cleanup and management. Encountering people homeless in the outdoors on the fringes of Moab, Sara and David would pay the homeless campers to help with cleanup. Then they started asking: what do you need? And to this day, Sara and Moab Solutions’ outreach coordinator Win Bloodworth make connections in the community to help those who need it with rehabilitation and recovery, one person, one little step at a time.

And then there’s Lil Boo. Lil Boo is Sara’s dawg, who sat quietly, as promised, during our interview. “He’s my supervisor,” Sara says. “He makes sure I’m working.”

I am recalling my first glimpse of Sara Melnicoff. I had recently relocated to Moab, and it was one of those Moab flash mob days where you and everyone you know is somehow on the street for some thing or another. I remember seeing this person in the crowd and having a “Who is that” moment. There’s something about her that is arresting, a quiet but compelling amalgamation of dedication and shine. Not shine like the angel’s halo – more like the iridescent gleam of glass shards and aluminum shavings peeking through the rubbish so you suddenly, magically know where to go.

Moab Solutions, still and always “reaching out to the community” and, of course, the many partners that help with the montage of tasks and dreams. Volunteer to help with cleanups, sign up for the Christmas fundraiser at City Market, donate to the emergency needs fund and/or Moab Solutions’ many local partners, or simply be grateful.

moab_solutions@hotmail.com/435-401-4685

And don’t forget to mention you read about it here in Moab Happenings!