Boyle found his Riverkeeper in John Cronin and Cronin found his calling in this new organization. Only after Cronin's first acts as Riverkeeper did it grow in popularity. Upon taking on his role as Riverkeeper in 1983, Cronin was tipped off by a state trooper that oil tankers were rinsing contents into the Hudson. He quickly engaged the issue and often anchored near the advised area to listen to the captains' discussions over the radio at night. When he learned ships were flushing out jet fuel residue and filling up with river water to take to an Exxon refinery, Cronin started collecting water samples. Over two years, he recorded one hundred seventy-seven Exxon tankers discharge into the river and take up clean water. Cronin's proof was so thorough that Exxon settled, paying $1.5 million to New York State for a private river management fund and $500,000 to HRFA; half of which went to Riverkeeper and the other half towards environmental projects on the Hudson. This case afforded Riverkeeper local and national regard. In 1986, HRFA joined Riverkeeper as one group to protect the river, to retract it from corporate abuse and to return it to public use. Cronin saw Riverkeeper's new mission as not just to hunt polluters, but to prove itself to the community and empower those who felt the social disruption of the ecological misuse of the Hudson.