Cookie Kickoff Crumbles : Valley Girl Scout Council Forced to Delay Its Sales Drive

With its office and warehouse, as well as its customers’ lives, still in disarray from quake damage, the San Fernando Valley Girl Scout Council has delayed its cookie drive kickoff for the first time in its 30-year history.

The kickoff celebration, initially scheduled for last Saturday on the rooftop of the Burbank Media Center, won’t be held until March 5.

The San Fernando Valley Council office on Winnetka Avenue in Chatsworth incurred structural damage in the Jan. 17 quake, and staff members could not enter the building for a week. Two steel beams have been inserted as braces to hold up one end of the building, scout officials said, and until this week staff members wore hard hats and dust masks as part of their daily office attire.

Then, just when the worst seemed to be over, a pipe burst a week after the quake, causing water damage now viewed as more costly to rectify than the quake damage.

A confluence of factors led to the decision to postpone--including fear of panic among the girls if aftershocks marred the kickoff on the Media Center rooftop, and the quake’s disruption to the lives of Valley residents, scouts and troop leaders.

“People are not worried about putting a year’s supply of cookies in their freezers because they may not have freezers,” said Arlene Faber, interim executive director for the San Fernando Valley Council.

Still, Faber is hoping the monthlong delay will allow residents to regroup and make the cookie drive a success.

“Delaying the start should help mitigate the impact of the earthquake because a lot of people will have had time to get themselves back into their homes and their jobs and their kids back into school,” Faber said.

Faber is most concerned about Valley businesses that traditionally allow scouts to set up booths. Some of these businesses are still closed and might not reopen in time for the March 5 through 20 sales period.

The San Fernando Valley Council, one of 10 Southern California Girl Scout councils, includes scouts throughout the Valley, Burbank and Glendale, and consistently ranks in the top 10% of sales nationally. Last year, each scout sold an average of 115 boxes, Faber said.

Gwen Erby, troop leader for the Buenas Amigas troop, which includes girls from Pacoima, San Fernando, Lake View Terrace and Sylmar, is not worried about the delay.

“I think that people are going to want Girl Scout cookies no matter what,” Erby said. “If somebody has bought a box of cookies at their office, and if a girl goes to their house, nine times out of 10 they’re going to buy them because they like the product.”

The delay was welcome news for Erby’s cadet troop, five eighth- and ninth-graders.

“They were happy that it had been postponed because they were more concerned about helping their families clean up and get things done,” Faber said.

The Buenas Amigas troop made $200 last year and is saving the money for a trip to a Girl Scout training center in New York in 1995.

Sue Sanders, troop leader for Junior Troop 635 of Northridge and Reseda--the quake’s epicenter--is also pleased by the delay. “I’m the cookie chairman for our service unit, and I know personally I have no room to store cookies in my garage because it’s just been trashed,” Sanders said.

And while all businesses and residences may not be back to normal in a month, Sanders believes that “at least (the earthquake) won’t be on people’s minds as much.”

“It’s not right to ask people to buy Girl Scout cookies when they’re more worried about their safety,” said Rachel Miller, a senior Girl Scout in a Canoga Park troop who has peddled cookies for the past 11 years. “Some of them don’t even have houses.”