Meet Lake Forest’s Top Cookie

The first day she could sell Girl Scout cookies, Sophie Quartucci went out in the rain to peddle them door to door.

When she found her Foothill Ranch neighborhood too saturated with other Girl Scouts, the fourth-grader convinced her mom to fill her trunk with cookies to sell in her grandmother’s neighborhood in Anaheim Hills. They even decorated her mother’s car with signs reading, “OMG! We have Girl Scout cookies!” and “We know you love them!”

Sophie, 9, worked at cookie sale booths in front of local stores several days a week for a month, where she and her troopmates serenaded potential buyers. To the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” they sang, “We know you love Girl Scout cookies, so buy some right now.”

It worked.

In the end, even Sophie had no idea that the total number of boxes she sold—1,050—would be more cookies than anyone else in the Girl Scout’s Lake Forest Service Unit. For the record, at $4 a box, that means $4,200 worth of cookies.

“It’s pretty exciting,” said Sophie, who earned an iPod Nano, an invitation to a special girls' night out party and other prizes for her effort.

Just one other Lake Forest scout—Taylor Ulrich, from Daisy Troop 1560—sold more than 1,000 boxes of cookies this year. Ulrich sold 1,001.

Sophie and Taylor are in elite company, when it comes to cookie sales. According to the Girl Scout Council of Orange County, just 66 Girl Scouts here sold more than 1,000 boxes of cookies during this year's month-and-a-half sales stretch, which ran from Jan. 30 to March 13. The single highest seller in the county, Annalia Aden, sold 3,000 boxes.

Sophie’s mother, Christie Troxell, is the parent leader of her troop,  No. 1564. Troxell said the whole troop of 18 girls sold 2,970 boxes. The troop will use the money from cookie sales for charitable purposes close to home, such as helping injured seals and sea lions and aiding pediatric cancer research. Some of the funds will allow the troop an overnight excursion to SeaWorld, where they will spend the night near the park's beluga whale.

Sophie and her mother are especially proud that Sophie was able to sell 110 “cookie shares,” where people paid for boxes to be donated to active military troops serving at Camp Pendleton.

“We just asked if they wanted to donate for the troops,” the 9-year-old explains. “We kept a jar out at our booth sales.”

Troxell said the troop held one especially colorful booth sale as sales were winding down. The girls all wore crazy hair, crazy clothes and painted rainbow spots all over their bodies. They held signs that read, “We have cookie fever!”  as they sold cookies in front of Henry’s Marketplace in Mission Viejo.

Sophie, who wants to be a lawyer or an actor when she grows up, said that when she isn’t scouting, she enjoys playing volleyball and singing in the chorus at school.

She has several kinds of favorite Girl Scout cookies: Caramel deLites, Lemonades and Peanut Butter Patties. If she could invent a new cookie flavor, it would be peanut butter and jelly, she said.

So what would Lake Forest’s top seller tell anyone looking for advice about how to sell more cookies? Well, she said, she found that people were more likely to buy if she "stopped and gave them a compliment before we asked them if they wanted cookies.” But, she warned, it has to come from the heart.

“You just try your hardest. Be yourself,” she said. “And only give the compliments if you mean them.”