By DeAnn Rossetti
Spring is nearly here, flowers and cookies are sprouting up all over the Island, and it’s Girl Scout cookie time again. For those of you who need your cookie fix pronto, Girl Scouts from 16 local troops will be selling eight varieties of cookies at local stores.
Through March 20, each weekend, Girl Scouts will be selling cookies outside the grocery stores and from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday outside of Bank of America, and 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday outside of Hollywood Video.
Each box costs $4, the first price increase in Girl Scout cookies in 12 years. Last year, Girl Scouts in the NW Washington area sold 2.4 million boxes of cookies.
There are 3.8 million Girl Scouts nationwide who sell cookies every spring.
Proceeds from cookie sales finance local programs and activities. This year, $500,000 has been earmarked to support the 7.7 million Happy Campers Capital Campaign to refurbish Girl Scout camping facilities and create one more camp, because of the demand for summer residence camps.
“Each camp can only hold 200 girls, and there are 15,000 Girl Scouts in the Puget Sound area,” said Peggy Fuller, Girl Scouts public relations representative. “Resident summer camps are popular, and there are more girls than camps for them.”
The variety of cookies include Thin mints, Samoas, Tagalongs, Do-Si-Dos, Trefoils, Double Dutch, all Abouts and Lemon Coolers. Thin Mints the clear leader in public popularity, ranking as the third highest selling cookie in the United States, behind Chips Ahoy and Oreo cookies.
For more information on Girl Scouts and the Happy Campers Campaign, go to www.girlscoutotem.org/capitalcampaign or call 800-767-6845.
Local doc receives award
Dr. Alan Wilensky, associate professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Washington and Director of Inpatient Monitoring at the Regional Epilepsy Center at Harborview, has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Epilepsy Foundation Northwest.
“I’m very flattered; it’s not something I expected to get,” said Dr. Wilensky. “But you can’t do what I do without everyone else … it’s a group effort.”
An Island resident since 1976, Dr. Wilensky will be presented with the honor at EFNW’s Lifetime Achievement Awards Brunch on March 13.
The EFNW stated that Dr. Wilensky is being honored for a lifetime of dedicated teaching and research on behalf of people with epilepsy.
Beginning with his pioneering research at the UW funded by the National Institute of Health in 1977, he served as the principle investigator in a study with Dr. Arthur Ward, the founder and driving force behind the UWs world-renown Epilepsy Center and School of Neurology. Dr. Wilensky has trained literally hundreds of clinicians in the treatment of people with epilepsy.
“All I am doing is making people better in trying to help them with this disease,” said Dr. Wilensky.
For more information about the EFNW, contact them at www.epilepsyfoundation.org/local/northwest , or call 206-547-4551.
Have an item for Around the Island? Contact DeAnn Rossetti at 232-1215 or e-mail her at deann.rossetti@mi-reporter.com
