Nothing Sweet About Candy Sales

Friday, May 1, 2009

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Nothing Sweet About Candy Sales

By J’AMY PACHECO

When it comes to parenting, I’ve taken an approach that many would probably describe as overprotective.

Therefore, it always comes as something of a shock to me to find unaccompanied children at my door or approaching me in parking lots with requests to buy things – usually, candy.

The candy frequently is grossly overpriced, but I used to sometimes buy it because I bought into the pitch that proceeds from the candy sale would help keep kids out of gangs and off drugs. As these kinds of encounters became more frequent, I started finding articles suggesting the kids were not working with charitable entities, but were instead being exploited by profiteers. I stopped buying.

Some time ago, a pair of teens showed up at my front door with this pitch. I declined, and they shifted to a hard sell approach. I firmly declined, and they turned to go. But on the way, one of them intentionally kicked over a plant stand on the porch – convincing me that I’d been right to refuse them.

I’d had no recent experience with these candy kids when a friend called to tell me about something that happened at the grocery store. She’d run out to pick up a few things around 8:30 p.m., and on the way in, declined a young girl’s pitch for a giant Pixie Stick.

Rushing back to her car, she noticed the girl standing next to a van, talking to the man behind the wheel. My friend – also an overprotective mother, and the wife of a retired police officer – told me that something about the pair raised red flags. She watched for a few minutes, and came to the conclusion that the girl was trying very hard to sell the man some candy.

Intuition sent her to the van, where she pointedly asked the girl if she was with the man in the van. The girl said she was not, and confirmed that she was trying to sell him some candy. The man drove off into the darkness in a big hurry.

The girl, who appeared to be under the age of 10, willingly and unquestioningly accompanied my friend to the front of the store. She told my friend that she’d been dropped off by a man named “Carlos,” and that she was under orders to sell all of her candy before he returned.

The girl was soon joined by a boy who had also been dropped off. Both attempted to pass themselves off as older than they really were. Both admitted to being hungry, and both seemed worried about getting rid of the rest of their candy.

With great enthusiasm, the little girl told my friend that she was selling the candy to earn a trip to Magic Mountain. Her mom, she said, would get to go too.

My friend called the police, who she said seemed uncertain about what to do. While they spoke to the kids, the girl announced that Carlos was back.

“Carlos” spotted the police officers with the kids, and immediately took off. Advised that the little girl’s 14-year-old sister was in the van with Carlos, an officer took off after them.

Leaving the situation in the hands of the police, my friend drove home. She has no idea how the situation was resolved, and what happened to the kids. But both of us have been haunted by thoughts of what might have happened to the little girl if my friend had not intervened.

A decade ago, the attorney general in Washington filed suit against several candy peddlers who violated child labor laws by doing exactly what my friend observed. Two years after that, the Los Angeles Times ran an article documenting the experiences of youths who had been exploited by candy crews. Obviously, authorities have known about this situation for a very long time. Yet 10 years later, a little girl is still hawking Pixie Sticks to strange men in vans after dark.

I had hoped that my friend’s action had resolved the situation locally, even if only temporarily. But a few days after my friend’s encounter, my daughter and I were approached in the parking lot of a different store in the same market chain by a boy who appeared to be about 13. When he offered to sell us candy, I held my hand up in a “no, thanks” gesture.

He smiled affably, and assured me, “It’s for a really good cause.”

“I suspect it’s not a good cause at all,” I said. His eyes grew wide, and he hurried away.

Somewhere out there I suspect Carlos, or somebody just like him, was waiting in a van filled with kids, counting his take from the latest day in a decade’s worth of child exploitation.