By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Some upstart, would-be business moguls decided to splurge on lunch for the officers of the Sea Isle City Police Department.
They bought $155 worth of food – 40 sandwiches, 30 cupcakes and two cases of soda.
Sounds generous, right? But the really surprising part is that the police officers were treated to lunch by a sister and brother whose combined age is in the single digits.
Cosette Symons, 5, and her 3-year-old brother, Ryder, raised the money by operating a lemonade stand at the corner of 68th Street and Landis Avenue on Friday.
The adorable, pint-sized kids displayed some pretty savvy business acumen in the process by netting $155 in sales in just two hours.
“I said, ‘Oh, my God, they’ve made more than a bartender,” joked their father, Jason Symons.
Jason, his wife, Krista, and their two children live in Manahawkin, Ocean County. They own a vacation home in Sea Isle on 68th Street. Jason said the Marcolongo family, on his mother’s side, has roots in Sea Isle going all the way back to the early 1900s, when they owned property in Townsends Inlet.
Cosette and Ryder seem to be strengthening the family’s ties to Sea Isle with their philanthropy. The kids wanted to show their appreciation to the police officers by buying them lunch this past Saturday, their father explained.
“My son calls them ‘Woo-Woos,’” he said, noting that the pronunciation roughly imitates the sound of police sirens.
There is already a strong connection between the Symons family and law enforcement. Jason is a retired officer in Howell, Monmouth County, and now works as a dispatcher with the police department there.
“They felt good about that and were enthusiastic that they were able to give something to the officers,” Jason said of his kids buying lunch for Sea Isle’s police department
Now, the kids are thinking about bringing back their lemonade stand to raise money for lunch for Sea Isle’s other first responders and members of the local VFW Post 1963.
“They said they want to do it again,” Jason noted.
During Cosette and Ryder’s lemonade sales on Friday, members of the community showed their generosity through a steady flow of business. Some people simply donated money without buying any lemonade or the baked cookies that the kids were selling, Jason said
After their successful business venture, the kids took a toy treasure chest to Blitz’s Market in Sea Isle so they could carry all of the sandwiches, cupcakes and sodas they bought for the police officers.
The police department expressed its gratitude to Cosette and Ryder by posting a special thank you and photos of the children on its Facebook page. The kids were also given magnets, coloring books and police stickers by the officers.
“Those kids put a lot of thought and effort into it,” Police Chief Tom McQuillen said.
McQuillen said the kind gesture by the children reflected the type of community relations he has been emphasizing between the police department and the public since he was named chief in 2018.
“It means so much to the officers,” McQuillen said. “It reinforces why you come to work each day. It’s awesome.”
