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Girl, 8, a monster at cookie sales

Local Girl Scout sells 3,500 boxes in 1½ weeks
Olivia Gomez-Cruz

When it comes to learning how to compete in the free market, there is, perhaps, no fiercer first job than hawking cookies for Girl Scouts of America.

Unlike rapacious first-year traders at Goldman Sachs, in the Girl Scouts, ambitious youngbloods have to relentlessly hustle without the benefit of an economics degree if they’re going to move more product than their adorable rivals.

Yet despite the odds, this year, an 8-year-old Durango kid has proved a sales genius.

With 3,500 packages of Girl Scout cookies sold, Olivia Gomez-Cruz, a third-grader who’s home-schooled in Durango, has muscled her way into the upper echelons of cookie sellers in Colorado, becoming the third top seller in the state, according to AnneMarie Harper, public relations director for Girl Scouts of Colorado.

Karla Gomez, Olivia’s mother, noted Monday with understandable pride that Olivia is the youngest seller in the top three. This year, she said, first place was taken by a sixth-grader, and second place, by a seventh-grader.

“Olivia’s definitely the youngest,” she said.

Olivia’s feat is even more impressive given the circumstances: she sold all 3,500 boxes within a week and a half of delivery to her home – “and when she ran out of cookies, they still had four more weeks to sell them,” said Gomez.

Unlike coast-dwelling Girl Scouts, who increasingly use the Internet to peddle cookies, Gomez-Cruz flogged the product door-to-door and at booths in Durango and Ignacio, where Olivia’s father Brandon Cruz lives.

Gomez said it was a struggle for Olivia to get her hands on cookies at all this year, with shipments from the East Coast delayed by bad weather.

In the end, women involved with troupes in Cortez and Grand Junction heroically intervened to make sure Olivia, who placed seventh last year, had cookies to sell to her loyal and infamously legion local customers.

Gomez attributed her daughter’s extraordinary success to Olivia being “highly motivated, a hard worker, and just a very good girl. When people said ‘no,’ she just moved on to the next person.”

Gomez said she was very grateful her daughter could have such an empowering entrepreneurial experience.

“Studies show that girls who participate in the Girl Scouts are more likely to graduate from high school and go to college. Something like this is very important in helping girls build self-esteem, and setting goals that they try to achieve. I’ve just noticed – I’m very proud of her cookie sales – but it’s also really helped her in those areas,” she said.

cmcallister@durangoherald.com



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