MARYSVILLE – When Jody Knoblich read about people badmouthing Marysville, it bothered her.

“It’s not as bad as social media would leave you to believe,” she said this week.

Knoblich is a social media junkie. She follows all of the online crime and community sites. She got tired of reading posts that asked, “What do you expect – it’s Marysville.” “People are throwing their hands up and giving up,” Knoblich said. She knew about a group in Everett called, “Take Back Your Neighborhood.” She said it had success cleaning up that town. “They’ve taken back Clark Park from the homeless and drug addicts,” she said.

So, just a few weeks ago she decided to start one up online in Marysville. It already has 301 members.

The last two weekends a handful of members has cleaned up the outside of four Marysville schools: Marshall and Allen Creek elementaries and Marysville and Totem middle schools. They have found graffiti, needles, pills and drug paraphernalia. One volunteer worried about safety at Totem because of what was found. Her son was to start there Wednesday.

Knoblich got the OK from the school district to help. “They just don’t have the manpower,” she said.

Knoblich and Maggie Spencer, the other co-founder of Take Back Our Community – S. Marysville, have been getting supplies donated to them. Four boxes of latex gloves and four trash grabbers were donated. They hope an oral surgeon will donate Sharp containers for needles that are found. Knoblich, the advertising manager of the Globe-Times, went online to Tobuynothing in south Marysville to look for more supplies. She said their effort had about 75 members, but when it posted photos of what they found at the schools that number grew by more than 200 in one day. Knoblich is worried that as Everett becomes less accommodating to homeless and addicts that they will make their way across the bridge to Marysville. “We’re soccer moms with Sharp containers,” she joked. In her efforts so far, she has not run across any “people of the night,” but they have been rough in Everett on Katie Harrington, who started the effort there.

When she does run across homeless and addicts, Knoblich’s goal is to have a resource card to give to them. She also said their site will be glad to run information on “positive, family friendly events.”