Sylvia McLaughlin was the co-founder of the Save the San Francisco Bay Association and a leader in numerous other environmental and community organizations. She spent a majority of her early years in Colorado where her parents were active participants in civic engagement and had deep interest in parks, outdoor recreation, the arts, and the community. After graduating from Vassar College in 1948, she married Donald McLaughlin and moved to Berkeley, California to raise a family. It was here that she began her lifelong crusade against the contamination of the bay after witnessing garbage trucks filling the bay constantly. McLaughlin along with Kay Kerr, wife of university president Clark Kerr, and Esther Gulick went on to form Save San Francisco Bay Association (1961) in an attempt to halt further degradation of the bay and to return privately owned shoreline lands back to public ownership. She was also a part of Citizens for an Eastshore Park (CESP) and other Bay Area and national organizations in an attempt to create, preserve and restore natural resources, parks and liveable urban spaces. In this interview, McLaughlin discusses the first twenty-five years of Save the Bay, family background and history, ski trips in Denver, work with CESP, integration of biodiversity and toxic pollution, network of environmental organizations she was involved with such as the National Audubon Society, Save the Redwoods League, CESP, Greenbelt Alliance, Urban Care, Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, and Strawberry Creek Plaza Alliance, and involvement with the University of California Berkeley.