How to pay for college? Hot dogs

WARWICK — With the price of a college education, and the federal loan interest rates rising, two local Warwick girls have initiated an idea to help with the cost of their college tuition.

Casey Magee and Sydney Umberto have pooled their savings and refurbished a hotdog cart which was owned by Sydney’s grandfather. With painstaking labor and a lot of elbow grease, Sydney and Casey shined the cart to look new.

With new rubber on the wheels, a fresh coat of paint on the spokes, some help from Sydney’s father Eddie, who updated the jets and the tanks, and a permit from the Village of Warwick, these two local girls rolled out the cart on a path to their college degrees.

“The two girls work like well-oiled machinery,” said customer Tom Brick. “I was so excited when I saw the big blue and yellow ‘Sabrett’ umbrella. There is nothing like a Sabrett hotdog from a cart, with the red onions. This was a treat I thought I could only find in Manhattan.”

Fashion and science
Both Casey and Sydney will be juniors at Warwick Valley High School in the fall and hope to continue to work hard academically to pursue their career interests.

Sydney is interested in fashion; she’ll be going to Orange-Ulster BOCES Career and Technical Education Center in the fall. She also is taking precollege courses at FIT.

Casey is a member of the Junior Corps of the Warwick Community Ambulance Service. She is enrolled in the science research program, a three-year course through SUNY Albany. She is on the honors track in science and math and is looking to study bio-engineering .

Part of the community
And both said they were proud to part of Warwick’s business community.

“It’s not easy work. There is a lot of preparation, cleaning the cart, keeping the hotdogs fresh and hot and the sodas cold,” Casey said. “Sydney and I are on our feet for long hours and the cart is a little heavy to push, but it makes us happy to see others happy. Especially when they purchase one hotdog and five minutes later, they are back for another.”

Sydney added: “I love it when the workers from the restaurants come out for a hotdog. They even give us tips. I guess nothing beats a Sabrett hot dog.”

Nor the entrepreneurial spirit of two young women.

Karina Magee is a 2012 graduate of Warwick Valley High School who is now studying journalism at Ithaca College.