Drug Ranch Will Be Worth the Cookies : Girl Scouts’ Purchase of Seized Estate Is Ideal Solution

It’s hard to think of a more satisfying ending to the controversy over what to do with Rancho del Rio, the 213-acre ranch seized in a 1985 drug raid and put on the auction block by the Orange County Board of Supervisors. On June 26, the Girl Scout Council of Orange County was high bidder at $2.38 million, beating out a local real estate developer.

If the Rancho del Rio sale is approved by the federal government, as expected, the ranch will be used as a year-round campground for the county’s 22,800 Girl Scouts. That means Girl Scout cookie fans will have to buy a lot of Samoas, Thin Mints, Tag-a-Longs and Do-Si-Dos in coming years to help pay for the facility. But it will be worth it. And this resolution is a satisfactory conclusion for financially squeezed Orange County.

The ranch was put up for auction with a minimum price of $1.54 million after the Board of Supervisors, in a welcome display of good judgment, turned down Sheriff Brad Gates’ idea to use it as a regional drug-enforcement training facility. The board correctly decided that, because of budget constraints, the county could not afford even the risk that it might eventually have to spend millions of dollars a year to operate such a facility.

Girl Scout leaders say they have no plans to build a conference center or make other major improvements at Rancho del Rio. Instead, Scouts will simply camp there, one of their favorite group activities. That opportunity, which fosters friendship and helps build self-esteem, currently is available to Orange County Girl Scouts at a Scouting facility in Idyllwild in Riverside County--several hours away. Local public parks fill in some of the gaps, but Scout leaders say they don’t like taking the girls to parks where security cannot be guaranteed. Only Scouts will be allowed at Rancho del Rio.

Purchase of the site could not have come at a better time for the Orange County Council of Girl Scouts because it should help recruit more girls into the program. While Scouting is a strong tradition in the white community, the council wants to expand it to Latino and Asian-American girls.

But that has not been easy. Currently, only about 18% of the Orange County girls who participate are from minority groups, compared to a nearly 33% minority among Scouting-age girls in the county’s schools. Girl Scouts now prints information booklets in seven languages--Spanish, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Korean, Japanese and English--to help with recruitment.

While girls today have many other activities to enjoy than when Girl Scouts was founded in 1912, Scouting still offers a place to learn about themselves and acquire skills that can be useful in future years. Once relegated to earning badges in areas such as cooking and sewing, Scouts now have their choice of more than 100 subjects, ranging from computers to video production and how to have healthy relationships. Like camping, these activities give girls pride in their achievements. And it seems to work: A national 1990 Girl Scout survey found that girls who participated in Scouting were less likely than non-scouts to cheat on school exams and more likely to refuse alcoholic drinks or refrain from having sex. In a time when teen-age drug use and pregnancy are rampant, Scouting helps girls make the right choices.

Scouting leaders couldn’t help chuckling as they anticipated giving talks to girls on the dangers of drug use on the same site once owned by an international drug kingpin. Turning Rancho del Rio over to the Girl Scouts is a wonderful conclusion to the story of this troubled ranch.