VENTURA : Students Win Limo Ride in Sales Contest

More than 100 students at Anacapa Middle School traded in brown bags and cafeteria food on Monday for a ride in a stretch limo to the lunch place of their choice.

As a reward for selling magazines and music tapes to benefit the school, the children were whisked away in a dozen white stretch limousines whose drivers were instructed to take the students nearly anywhere they wanted to go--except to their homes.

The only catch was the students’ fantasy trip, like Cinderella’s, had a deadline: They had to be back at school by the stroke of 2:30 p.m., giving them just two hours.

Shelby Sandefur was one of the 118 children who took the lunchtime ride, which was awarded to students who sold at least 15 magazine subscriptions, music tapes or compact discs in a school fund-raising drive.

The 10 students in her limousine decided they would go first to a popular fast-food restaurant in Carpinteria and then to the beach, 13-year-old Shelby said. “We didn’t really have that much time and we wanted to do a lot of stuff.”

But they couldn’t save time by eating in the car: It wasn’t allowed.

Altogether, the more than 1,000 students at Anacapa sold more than 4,000 subscriptions this fall to magazines ranging from Newsweek to Sports Illustrated.

Sponsored by Reader’s Digest, the annual fund-raising drive brings in well over $1,000 that the school uses for various projects and activities, Anacapa officials said.

As an incentive, Reader’s Digest offers the coveted limousine rides to the children who sell the most.

And the students, most of whom have never ridden in a limousine before, often revel in the attention that they get from passersby and other motorists, said Bob DeMaio, who manages a Newbury Park limousine company and who drove one of the cars Monday.

DeMaio said he has driven students of all ages from many different schools and in nearly every case the excited children riding in the limousines pull the same stunts.

“They roll their window down at the light and ask everybody if they have some grey poupon,” mimicking a television commercial and an antic in a popular summer movie, DeMaio said. “Or they get out of the car and say they’re movie stars.”