1,001 Girl Scout Cookies

One Determined Girl

February 12, 2010

By Rebecca Gannon

(WICHITA, Kan.)

Thin Mints, Peanut Butter Patties or Caramel deLights. We all have a favorite Girl Scout cookie.

One Kansas scout has 1,001 cookie boxes to deliver this weekend, most to one special person.

They come by the truckload. Cases of cookies, piled in the office and reaching to the ceiling.

Each case hold boxes of cookies. Each box sold by an enterprising Kansas girl scout.

But enterprising may not describe Sara Glasper. You would never guess all these boxes were sold by a quiet fifth grader.

Getting an answer out of Sara can be tough. She'll smile, she'll nod her head, and she'll answer in short sentences. She admits she's nervous in front of the cameras.

But maybe the better adjectives to describe her are determined, competitive, maybe goal oriented.

She's sold 1,001 Girl Scout cookie boxes - the exact amount to earn an iPod Nano. "That was on the prize list when you sell that many cookies," she said. And it was her goal to earn it.

Sara - and her mother - started selling to family. "She's been so excited," said her more-talkative mother Stephanie. "Every time she would get an order, or someone would call with an order, she would say, I'm almost there! I'm almost there!"

And it was a family member who bought the most cookies and got her there; her big brother.

Stephanie said her son had joked before, asking for 160 boxes of cookies. Then 100 boxes. "and then he called and said, 'No, for real, give me 50 boxes, this will get her to her thousand.' And, he ordered 50 boxes."

Sara's not the only girl in the Kansas area to sell more than a thousand boxes of cookies - three other girls also did the same thing. There are more than 12,000 Girl Scouts in the Kansas area. If one hasn't talked to you yet about buying cookies, don't worry. They're getting creative with their selling strategies.

"We have great technology the girls are utilizing today," explained Angela Stateler, a former Girl Scout herself. "If they're old enough, the can send messages on Facebook, or emails, or use twitter, texting. Anything to let their customers know it's GSC time, so they can place their orders again."

Whatever the strategy, it worked for Sara. What came on a semi truck will leave in a mini-van. And Sara will deliver it all, starting with her brother.

Cookies ordered from Girl Scouts will be delivered next week. If you haven't bought any yet, scouts will have stands setup at various places starting Friday, Feb. 19.

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