Underground Good: Jessica Foster

Ed Note: This Opinion piece is part of our Underground Good series, which focuses on providing a window into the mindsets of ordinary people doing good work in their community. It’s written by sociologist, coach and evaluation consultant Sharon Brisolara. You can find the rest of our Underground Good series here. Want to nominate someone? You can do that here.

12.2.24 10:25 am: We have corrected the link in the first line of this story.

Jessica Foster has been caretaking the Central Valley Cemetery for the past four years, ever since she lost her son.  She has encountered a great deal of solace and connection in her work at the Cemetery, and a sense that her actions matter. In this interview, she shares what her efforts to keep the property clean mean to her.  

What do you know about the history of this cemetery?

When they were building the Shasta Dam, they contacted families to see if they wanted to move the graves of their family members before the lake filled. I think there were 26 cemeteries under where the Dam is. They got a hold of 301 family members and most said yes, they would like their loved ones here. They moved 298 people here, another two people went to the cemetery on Cypress and one went down south. The others are still under the Dam.

There are graves here from the 1800s. I know where everyone’s graves are. There are two sections to the cemetery. Over there is the Native American side. I saw the area over there had grass and weeds up to my shoulder tall. I weeded it all down. Some of the neighbors were concerned about it being a fire hazard so I decided to weed-eat it all.  I got permission from the Wintu Cultural Center, but I mainly just do weed eating and picking up branches that have fallen down.

There’s a video on YouTube called California Unearthed where a guy talks about the history of the Dam and this cemetery.  If you watch it, you can see the difference from six years ago to now; when I started working here, it was just weeds. You couldn’t even see graves. It looked like a field of nothing, just debris and trash – trash everywhere.

What do you do when you come here?

I’ve uncovered 65 graves. I put flowers on all the graves I uncover.  But, when it rains, the water will push all the dirt down, and it covers all the graves and nobody knows that they’re there. The only way I found them was from raking. There are also graves that don’t have any name marker; some have a marker that says “Only known to God.” 

There’s no map for this place. Someone told me they lost the map for it. But I know where people are buried and when people come to the cemetery, they’ll ask me if I know where so and so is? I’ll think about it, and then I will find the grave for them.

I filled up three city dump trailers once with brush and trash. I’ve gotten a burn permit before to burn branches and leaves. I cleaned off the graves and put flowers on them. I had a GoFundMe site for a minute so I could get flowers and tools. I would come in the morning and work from nine to 11 and then go home and then come back at six and work till nine, twice a day.

Sometimes I will see gravestones or markers that have fallen down. I don’t pick them up, but I will put flowers or flags right by them. I just leave them there, because I don’t know exactly where they were originally. I just got all these flags donated to me about three weeks ago from the cemetery over there on Continental. They donated 150 flags and I thought, all these graves are so old – I think they all deserve a flag. I was just going to put them on the veterans’ graves,  but I thought, it looks nice on all of them.

Recently, I didn’t come in for 10 days, and when I came here, I wanted to cry. It was after a storm and it was a complete mess. The flags were knocked down. My friend is supposed to bring me another dump trailer so I can pick up  all the piles of brush soon.  Sometimes, I’ve used my wheelbarrow and two plastic swimming pools to haul brush and leaves. I fill them up and drag them with a rope to a bigger pile.

When did you first start coming here?

October 23^rd, 2020 is when my 15-year-old son Chevy got killed. He was with his best friend. No one had ever taught his friend about guns, and he didn’t know there would be a bullet in the chamber when he was playing with it. He was just here all day with me. He told me,  “I want to vouch for you and all the cleaning you do.”

Note to readers: The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office has created a flyer on Firearm safety, The 11 Commandments of Gun Safety, available on the Health and Human Services Agency website under Specialized Resources: Firearms Safety.

At first, when I came here, I didn’t really do much, you know. I’d just sit here. But every day I would make my son’s grave different because it was just a big pile of dirt. People were coming every day to see him. He has friends that come here, four years later, to visit.

I had never even been to a cemetery before. But when he died, I would stay here at night with him. I would sleep here a lot with him, by myself. It’s not scary. There’s no evil here. I’m not scared at all here at night. It’s so pretty and colorful here because the lights we have strung up all around his grave light up.

I guess I just started working. I’m like, “Oh, this place is so ugly!” And I worked on his grave and slowly started doing other areas and ended up doing the whole cemetery. It was a mess here at first. I didn’t know where to begin. There were piles of branches as big as trees falling down. On the Native side, there are folks who come sometimes and clean things up, but I haven’t seen anyone on this side.

Some days, I’d be working so hard I couldn’t even move at the end of the day. But I felt like this is what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be.

I couldn’t find out who owned this place to even ask anything at first. One person at city hall was really nice. He replied back to my emails and gave me a contact. When I called them, they said they didn’t have any funding for clean ups, but I could keep volunteering here. I’ve been volunteering for four years. People say it looks amazing, so different from before.

I guess the Shasta County coroner owns this cemetery,  I just found that out, but I feel in some ways that it’s mine.

Note to readers: The coroner’s office confirmed that the cemetery is within their jurisdiction. Given budget limitations, a spokesperson said, they are typically only able to clean the cemetery twice a year.

How long have you lived in Shasta County?

I was born in Ventura, but raised in foster homes my whole life and ended up in a foster home up here when I was 15. I’ve been here, first in Shasta Lake and now Redding, ever since then. I’m 46 now.

How have people responded to your work at the cemetery?

One of the neighbors told me, “I’ve lived here since 1967, and this place never looked so nice.” I’ve had a lot of people tell me, “Oh my gosh, this place looks amazing. Who cleaned it?” I’m like, “Me”. They say, “You did all that?”

Earlier, since I would be here in the morning and at night, one neighbor told me, “You need to leave. You’re going to end up killing yourself. This is not healthy for you.”  

But this is just how I’m dealing with it, you know? I have spent over 13,000 hours here. All those hours helped me forgive my son’s friend and forgive myself.  At first, I was angry; the things I would think of doing. . .were not nice. But I’m not a hateful person, and being here made me realize that.

Spending all those days and hours here, in the snow, the rain, it doesn’t matter, it helped me forgive. I was mad at myself, too. Doing this turned me into, I think, a better person.

When other people say, you need to stop being there, I think, what do you mean? I have already spent so many hours here. You think I’m going to stop now? Not till I’m satisfied with it.  

I don’t come and just sit here and cry. Sometimes I’ll come sit with him when I take a break. I do this now because I want to do it.  I want to make it nice here. It should be nice. It’s a cemetery.

Have you had help from others?

I got city dump trailers over here once, with the help of my friend. He brought one, and then, a few days later, he brought me another one.  We filled the first one; it had 6000 pounds of stuff cleaned up from here. 

I used to make dream catchers after Chevy died, as a small fundraiser. I put out dreamcatchers that people could take and they would give a small donation that would go towards the cemetery for flowers and flags and tools that I needed. This one guy, he’s called the tree man, or the tree guy, gave me his card and told me to call him so he could do all the trees. He took care of one that was blocking the road up there. 

I also had a lady that saw the table and told me, “I’ll be right back. I’m going to go get your donations from my house, and bring you some tools.” She brought me shovels and rakes and stuff. I have rakes all over the place!

What does this mean to you, to work and be in this space?

I had to take a break for a minute, to learn how to deal with my grief better.  But I’m back and I’m doing something that I want to do. No cemetery should ever look uncared for, right? I would take a job here if there was one.

My son is an angel. I planted that tree for him. He has six siblings. I thought, I need to get six angels to put around the tree. And the next day, there were six mushrooms, little baby mushrooms that grew up under the tree. I had pictures of it.

And then we were at the lake one day, and you know how the water was so super low a couple years ago, and you could drive way out? His little two-year-old sister found a ring in the water that had a Chevy symbol inside. What are the chances of a two-year-old finding a ring in the middle of where the water’s always been?

Things like that have helped me get through. I have this one video of the moon that I put on Facebook with the caption:  “Missing you son.”  I had taken it in front of the campfire. When I looked at the picture, you could see this thing come out of the fire and go underneath the moon. And I was like, What the heck was that? I did it again, and it happened again- you could see a cross and then an angel.

If people wanted to help your efforts, what could they do?

Tree services would be great! If anyone wants to come out here and help with the piles of brush or the trees that have fallen down.  It’s a big, very big cemetery. Hauling trash would be great. That would help me out a lot. They could message me on Facebook at Jessica Foster if they would like to help.

Anything else that you want people to know?

I’m taking care of their loved ones and the forgotten ones.  So even if they don’t have a lot of time to visit, it will look nice when they come.

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