KENNEWICK, Wash. -

On June 17th, Reka Robinson was walking her dog along a trail near Columbia Drive when she came across a racial slur spray painted on the path. A path she frequently walks, only a mile from her home. 

She took a photo and continued her walk.

One June 26th, she was walking the path once more when she noticed the word was still there. 

Reka tells me she took the photo almost two weeks ago to see how long it would take the city to clean it up. 

However, after seeing the slur was still there, she took to Facebook to share her what she had seen. 

"I'm going to see how long it's going to take the city to erase this," she tells me, "I'm like I feel like it's been too long for this word to be on a walkway that more than one person has seen."

After hearing Rena's story, I reached out to the city of Kennewick for comment. 

I was told the city refers graffiti complaints to the Kennewick Police Department. The department runs an Abatement Program to help clean all graffiti around the city. 

Lieutenant Ryan Kelly with the KPD tells me the city officially filed a complaint this morning and the department is working to clean it up. 

He says, "We are going to make sure that it's permanently erased, and we encourage the community if you see graffiti of any kind, call our non-emergency dispatch number, a police officer will respond, take photos of it, investigate it. If there's surveillance videos, they'll try to get the video to prosecute."

He tells me those caught tagging face a malicious mischief charges. 

The Graffiti Abatement Program is a partnership with KPD and the Juvenile Detention Center where the juveniles in need of community service hours clean the graffiti. 

However, Robinson tells me with a racial slur like that, it can be traumatizing for some juveniles that clean it up. 

After sharing the story on Facebook, her friend Ryan Vogt took action. He shared the story with his daughters and decided to turn something negative into something positive. 

"My oldest daughter said, 'that's not right,' and instantly I said 'Well go get the sidewalk chalk and we're going to go take care of this," he tells me.

Robinson tells me she didn't expect someone other than the city to clean up the graffiti. 

Vogt and his daughters turned part of the word into a heart and the other part was the beginning to the word 'Generous'. He tells me the chose that word to represent the kind of person Reka is. 

The Kennewick Police Department tells me a report was filed this morning and is being sent to through the Abatement Program to be cleaned up as soon as possible.Â