My Green Apple Girl

Eastbayri.com - Sakonnet Times

< Back Friday, May 30, 2008 e-mail this story | print it

Its all about the packaging and there couldn't be a better picture then my girl on the bottle.


Jones Soda finds its green apple girl


The photo of Ashley Roggero that started it all, snapped while she rested after a day at the beach.

PORTSMOUTH — On a hot day last summer, 10-year-old Ashley Roggero, skin salty after hours of swimming and sunbathing with her family at McCorrie Beach, stretched out on the living room couch at home as the late-afternoon sunlight slanted in through the window.

That's what her father Jimmy saw, and he captured the moment with a photograph.

"We had just gotten home from the beach and she was pooped," said Mr. Roggero. "I thought it would be a cute picture."

Later a relative sent the family a case of Jones Soda that advertised a contest seeking photographs to be made into soda bottle labels, and they thought of Jimmy's photo.

"I thought it would be neat to be on a soda bottle," Ashley said.

Ashley, who is now 11 and in sixth grade at Portsmouth Middle School, has modeled before. When she was one year and two years old, she was photographed for advertisements used throughout Rhode Island.



The Portsmouth 11-year-old holds her prized bottle of Jones Soda in her favorite flavor: green apple.

She's no longer interested in modeling, though with her long sun-bleached blond hair and dimpled smile, she might still qualify.

Ashley has big plans to start up her own businesses and to play professional golf. She has a 35 handicap this year and hopes to get a sponsor to do the local amateur circuit. An avid surfer for four years (her favorite spot to hit the waves is at Surfer's End on Second Beach), she wants to open her own surf shop some day. But for now, she makes her own beach-glass jewelry, selling at craft fairs, and in two Portsmouth stores: Second Hand Rose and Natures.

The profits she's made from her jewelry line she reinvests back into it. She is expanding the business into shark-tooth and shell necklaces and bracelets and packages of make-your-own beach glass jewelry.

"I like running my own business," Ashley said. She dreams of her surf shop, which would carry boards and swim wear, as well as her jewelry line.

"Ashley's always tried to come up with business ideas of her own," said her mother, Jane. Ms. Roggero said Ashley takes after her parents, both self-employed entrepreneurs.

And the winner is ...

The family entered the photo, with Jimmy's caption, "Just Jonesing in the Sun," last October. They checked the website of the Canadian soda company and learned that 800,000 photos had been submitted. The winning photos were chosen by online voting so the Roggeros enlisted help from friends and family. And then they waited for the results.

They didn't hear back from Jones Soda until March when a letter arrived with a dozen glossy labels featuring Ashley in black-and-white.

Ashley's will be the face of Jones Soda's green apple.

"It's my favorite flavor" of Jones Soda, she said.

But not every green apple soda will have a label with Ashley on it since the company chose several submissions for each of its flavors of soda. It's sold in some major grocery stores, but the Roggeros have yet to find the Ashley bottle. So they made one from their own cache of labels, taping it to a green apple Jones Soda bottle.

By Jill Rodrigues

jrodrigues@eastbaynewspapers.com