This Queens Girl Scout is one smart cookie.
Springfield Gardens seventh-grader Najah Lorde more than doubled her cookie sales from last year to become the top seller in the city with 2,833 boxes.
Najah, 12, has been selling cookies since she joined the Girl Scouts in second grade, but didn’t surpass the 1,000 mark until 2013 when she sold 1,111 boxes.
That year, she was bested by Upper West Side resident Olivia Cranshaw by about 700 boxes.
Cranshaw set a goal of selling over 2,000 this year. She exceeded that number by 141, but Najah had the right ingredients for a win.
“I was running and screaming all over the house,” Najah said, describing the moment she found out she was the cookie champ.
Each Girl Scout that sells over 1,000 boxes receives all the prizes offered, including a Nintendo Wii and Sephora gift card.
“If you are the top seller you just win bragging rights,” Najah said.
“She’s very competitive, Najah’s father Donovan Lorde said. “She was very determined when the sale started.”
Najah, a member of Troop 4287, claimed she had no special strategy, but her father said she did have a plan, she just didn’t realize it.
He said she made a list of the people she wanted to call and even took his and his wife’s phones to look for potential buyers. Using her networking skills, the preteen urged her contacts to reach out to others.
The Girl Scout said she received a lot of support from family. She also sold the baked goods at her school, Divine Wisdom Catholic Academy in Douglaston, her church, the Greater Allen Cathedral of New York, and her parents’ workplace, SUNY Downstate Medical Center.
“When we tallied up the numbers and we saw 2,833, we were like ‘wow that is a lot of boxes,’” Donovan said.
“To a certain degree we were surprised by the number, but we weren’t surprised that she did it,” he added.
Najah is aiming for another win next year by selling at least 3,000 boxes.
Though her father is supportive of her ambitions, he admits the goal makes him somewhat “afraid.”
This Saturday, the boxes are set to arrive and they will need to figure out how to store, transport and hand out all those cookies.
“We are going to need a very big vehicle to pick up the boxes,” Donovan said.
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