Ransom Vassallo, a senior student who attends Analy High School, has picked up a bit of a side hustle for himself within the inner workings of the school system amongst his peers. One man has taken it upon himself to find a solitary solution to something that haunts us students. Something that plagues our wallets. Strips us of our freedoms. Leaves us broke. Something that feels so futile in the face of soaring gas prices that torment us all. Most students have to suck it up and settle for a part time job to just be able to live with these outrageous gas prices, but not Ransom. Ransom has found himself a nice, practical side gig that gets him that sweet, sweet cash, which is selling sweet sodas during the whole of the school day. For Ransom is always on the move, looking for his next sale from morning till later in the afternoon, you can find him sparking deals in all corners of the campus. He wastes no time dilly-dallying with peers, he has taken it upon himself to be the one and only true human vending machine. Ransom tends to carry around a variety of different sodas, most noticeably Dr Pepper, Sprite, and Cola-Coca. Of course, other choices of soda, such as Fanta and Root Beer, tend to be available from time to time. Ransom first started his business on a whim one November day in 2023, his junior year.
What truly pushed Ransom to start doing this was that he noticed how many of his fellow students were very unsatisfied with the pricing and products in the school vending machines. He sought to find a cheap, more pleasant alternative, which resulted in the birth of a central part of our community.
Ransom was often seen mostly just carrying around cases of sodas, this was a drag on Ransom at this time in his early career. He realized he needed a different solution. Sometimes that would make it less work for him and more enjoyable for his customers. This was nothing other than a cooler, this made it easier for him to get around and meet his customers’ demands for cold beverages. Ransom prices his sodas at 2 dollars; this roughly makes him 24 dollars per case. Ransom tends to sell about 3 cases of soda a day, which racks the amount of money he is making in a day up to about a whopping 72 dollars. Ransom soda dealing isn’t even just popular amongst his peers, it seems staff on campus also have taken an interest in his soda business. He has been seen dealing soda to multiple staff members.
Ransom’s soda dealing is such a sensation that it has been depicted in many different forms of media. Such as in the student film Detention, which was worked on by Antonio Gutierrez, Nouval Akbar, Gus Jordan and others, Ransom was portrayed as the character of the soda dealer. Surprisingly, this wasn’t the only time Ransom had been depicted in media as his salesman persona. In another upcoming film for the Only In West County film festival, called 17 Jump Street, Ransom acted yet again as a soda dealer.
Ransom decided to be Gus Jordan’s right-hand man when Gus ran for prom king this year. Like many other prom candidates, Gus and Ransom decided to make an Instagram account to hopefully gather the attention of more students. One of the things they did to market towards students was they made a video where they are pictured walking up suspensefully with baseball bats in hand and soda on a table in front of them. They proceeded to beat the soda cans with the baseball bats in a comedic fashion.
In all the student life of Analy High School shall never be the same when next school year rolls around because it will be missing such a key part of its foundation, Ransom. Not just Ransom’s sodas but the liveness he brings to the scene.
