Meet the State College cleaner who does a lot more than clean. How he’s inspired community
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- Damian Cabrera leads DSCID’s Clean Team as Pathfinder, beautifying downtown.
- Cabrera’s alter ego, Monster D, entertains residents with his drawings and personality.
- Cabrera connects residents to housing, meals and community garden resources.
Up busy streets like West Beaver Avenue and down side roads like Humes Alley, a man with a full beard, black gloves and boots can be found trekking through the streets of downtown State College.
Garbage can in tow, Damian Cabrera starts his days early, 8 a.m. sharp. For the next eight hours, he’ll clamp up dozens of cigarette butts, wrappers that missed the trash and the more than occasional throw-up splatter.
“The slimers, as we like to call them,” Cabrera said.
Community members often walk the clean streets of State College without a second thought — but it’s people like Cabrera who ensure the town is presentable and welcoming to visitors and residents alike. After the COVID-19 pandemic derailed his 18-year career in child care, Cabrera began working for the “Clean Team” in 2021, a sector of the Downtown State College Improvement District (DSCID). As their official Clean Team Pathfinder, Cabrera does more than beautify downtown; the 44-year-old is also a passionate community member with a love for State College and all it has to offer.
As Penn State alumni funnel back into town for State College’s Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts this weekend, the trash build-up from the festivities is the least of Cabrera’s worries. “Arts Fest,” as it’s been dubbed, has its own clean-up crew; instead, Cabrera and his team concern themselves with the other litter filling up the streets this weekend.
“There’ll be more beer cans, bottles, that kind of thing,” Cabrera said. “Maybe the occasional left shoe.”
While keeping a keen eye for curbside debris and sidewalk-wedged trash, Cabrera greets passers-by, sharing smiles, exchanging jokes and receiving thank yous from locals. If someone needs help with directions, like an out-of-town visitor, he’ll point them in the right direction.
“I didn’t really know downtown as well as I thought I did until I took this job,” Cabrera said. “Then I really got to know the guts of this town.”
Today, Cabrera could list the best food spots in town, the routes of local mail carriers and fun facts about the wildlife that scurry around State College. But, before he moved here in 2007 for a fresh start, Cabrera couldn’t find the college town on a map.
Community beyond cleaning
A native of Uniontown, about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh, Cabrera grew up in a low-income housing project with his mother and grandmother. Surrounded by violence and drugs, he found comfort in exploring the outdoors, watching monster movies and channeling his creativity.
“It was like an instant escapism,” he said.
That put him on the path he’s currently on. After going to art school in Pittsburgh, then pivoting to a career in child care, Cabrera was in search of something new — so he packed his bags and moved to State College. “It was exciting. It just felt right,” Cabrera said. “So I went for it.”
While he continued his career in child care at the Daybridge Child Development Center, in State College, Cabrera felt the desire to reconnect with his creative background. Combining his people skills, community- oriented values and childhood interests, Cabrera’s alter ego, artist and entertainer Monster D, began taking shape.
Dressed in a black top hat, purple cape and a utility belt of multicolored markers, Monster D brings spooky entertainment to the residents of State College. Accompanied by his maniacal “mu-hahaha” laughs, Monster D channels Cabrera’s drawing skills to create custom monster illustrations for State College residents. During his latest appearance at the Central PA 4th Fest, Monster D joined the parade with what he calls his “monster minions.”
His first appearance as Monster D came in 2015 at a Halloween event in the Nittany Mall. Though flustered, Cabrera stuck with his spooky gimmick and by the end of the night, accumulated a line of people waiting for custom Monster D drawings.
“That first time, oh I was a sweaty mess,” Cabrera said.
Ten years later, even through his post-pandemic job switch to DSCID’s Clean Team, Cabrera continues to perform as Monster D part-time.
‘Ways to give back’
Most times, Cabrera cleans the streets of State College, but after being promoted to Clean Team Pathfinder, he spends his weekends behind a computer, helping the community in other ways.
To help aid Centre County’s unhoused population — and anyone else in need of support — Cabrera sorts through housing and food resources, connecting the community to charitable organizations like Out of the Cold. Cabrera and the rest of the DSCID team have also served dinner at the shelter.
“I also realized that was a place that everyone was being directed to,” Cabrera said. “So I figured, you know, if there are other resources for housing too, let’s shine extra light on that.”
In addition to that, Cabrera’s Clean Team has established two community gardens in the downtown area, with one growing tomatoes and another growing purple peppers. Both gardens are free to all residents.
Despite doing so much in the State College community, Cabrera still strives to give more to the town he’s grown to love so much. In the future, Cabrera said he hopes to combine his community activities with his Monster D persona and try to attract more resources to aid the community.
“This job has taught me the value of the local community here,” Cabrera said. “Five years from now, I just hope that I’ve learned more ways to give back to it.”
In the meantime, while he continues to greet residents, business owners and mail carriers on the streets of State College, Cabrera finds his motivation in life’s simple gifts.
“The fact that I wake up in the morning is like God’s blessing for me,” Cabrera said. “I’m able to get up out of bed; I might as well make the most of it.”
This story was originally published July 13, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
