No ifs or ands but plenty of butts: 'Butt Lady' continues her clean sweep of Auburn streets, lots

Chances are, Sally Dawley has been seen by every resident in Auburn. That includes babies still in the womb, but more on that later. She, in fact, speaks to those unborn babies, and dogs, too. She's easily recognizable with her broom, pan, plastic bags and yellow-green shirt that reads "1,000,000 YES! That is one million! YUCK!" Oh, that's the Butt Lady; yes, you have seen her. Dawley has been featured locally on abc10 and CBS Sacramento, and on WHEC in Rochester, N.Y. She can be found on Facebook and viewed on YouTube. Yes, she has received a fair amount of press, including from the Auburn Journal, most recently Aug. 1 as the focus of a column by weekly contributor Susan Rushton. And while four months later might be a little soon to write about Dawley again, she's worthy and deserves the royal treatment as a subject of the Our Town community series. Dawley personifies Our Town. The "Butt Lady" of Auburn collected cigarette butt No. 1,000,000 at Mel's Diner in Auburn on Valentine's Day 2018 and was at 1,853,000-plus and inching ever closer to 2 million – butt by butt – when the Journal caught up with her recently as she rid its parking lot of the stinky little fiends, dangers they are to dogs, birds, fish and even plants. Since then, her total has increased to 1,863,000-plus. "It's irritating because these things are poison," Dawley says during a break after updating that day's number of butts swept into her pan on her counter. She keeps running daily and monthly totals. Her single-day record is 3,495 butts. Dawley is correct about the "poison" part. A cigarette butt – the filter tip – is made with the plastic cellulose acetate and paper or activated charcoal, plus "Macroporous phenol-formaldehyde resins and asbestos," according to Wikipedia. And let's not forget tar and nicotine leftovers. Dawley admitted she smoked – one time, as a fifth-grader, when she lived in Lake Tahoe. "My second puff was my last puff," she said. "I found it was stupid." When she reached 1,000,000 butts, Dancing Dogs Productions of Auburn printed shirts for her, which include the "No Smoking" logo on the left sleeve. She now has two long-sleeve and two short-sleeve shirts. Auburn Running Co. gave her a pair of shoes. She's now on her 13th pair. Dawley says her route varies. She covers Old Town, downtown, the Safeway, Target, Bel Air, Raley's, Staples and Save Mart parking lots, and many other city streets. "They're poison, people," she says. Dawley notes that birds, dogs and fish eat cigarette butts. She has asked people walking their dogs, "Can I say something to your dog? Don't eat cigarette butts," adding owners have acknowledged seeing their dog "pick up a cigarette butt." "I find them in plants. They poison plants, too," she says. And when she asks a pregnant woman, "Can I say something to your baby?" the message is clear to the future mom's bump: "Don't ever smoke."