"It's an economic stimulus for San Diego," said San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders to a crowd of more than 1,700 Girl Scouts, friends, and parents gathered on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Midway Saturday morning.
Mayor Sanders was there to congratulate all of the Girl Scouts in San Diego for their hard work selling cookies this year.
The event was the sendoff celebration for Operation Thin Mint, a Girl Scout program to raise money to provide cookies for the troops.
"It is a little bit of America sent forward all over the world," said Rear Admiral Len Herring, the Commander of the Navy Region Southwest.
This year, 184,108 boxes of Girl Scout cookies are being sent to military personnel all over the world, including the Philippines, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Horn of Africa, the Indian Ocean, and Iraq.
Saturday, a Coast Guard helicopter hovered over the deck of the Midway, and Coast Guard personnel used a rope to attach a huge package of cookies to the helicopter, which then flew off.
A special surprise was the arrival by helicopter of the five Girl Scouts who sold the most cookies in San Diego in 2009.
The top seller was Madison Perno, a 5th grader from Chula Vista. She sold 4,390 boxes this year -- 950 of those boxes were for Operation Thin Mint.
"I worked very hard and I never gave up and kept on trying," Madison said about how she sold that many cookies.
Brigadier General Angie Salinas, the commanding general at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, read an e-mail to the crowd from a Marine in Iraq that described how excited the Marines were to get cookies.
"One day several large boxes arrived and the Marines opened the boxes. These battle hardened men looked like kids in the candy store," she said.
This year, approximately 15,000 Girl Scouts from the San Diego-Imperial Council sold cookies. Since 2002, Operation Thin Mint has sent 1.5 million Thin Mints and other Girl Scout cookies to troops overseas.
"It's a piece of home and you girls made that possible," Rear Admiral Herring said, thanking the Girl Scouts.
-- Danielle Dawson, Girl Scout Troop 1452, Age 9
