Bullard High senior has high-flying business plan

If he wins the National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge competition Oct. 6, and a related online competition, he will receive $12,500 -- the exact amount he says he needs to in fact start his business.

A short video of his business is part of an "elevator pitch" competition in which the public determines who wins. Voters can vote once every 24 hours until Oct. 4. Alstrom's pitch has consistently ranked No. 4 or 5 in the elevator pitch contest recently.

Connor Alstrom, a Bullard High senior, flies a camera-equipped, remote-controlled helicopter. He is heading to the national finals for the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship competition in New York.

Alstrom's @Flying is an alternative to hiring a full-size helicopter with a photographer on board to get aerial shots. Alstrom says clients would save up to $200 per hour with his business.

Alstrom's idea was hatched in a high school entrepreneurship class. The New York-based Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship partners with the Lyles Center for Technology and Entrepreneurship at California State University, Fresno. The Lyles Center trains teachers to lead entrepreneurship classes in low-income communities. The classes reach 905 students from Bakersfield to Chico.

Great chance of winning

"We think Connor has a great chance of winning," said Genelle Taylor, the Lyles Center's associate director. "He has great presentation skills and he has a great business."

In the in the meantime, Alstrom is finishing his senior year and working at HobbyTown USA earlier heading to college. He wants to major in business administration at either Fresno State or in Fresno City College's honors program.

The competition

He is practicing his business pitch frequently earlier the competition, all during marveling at how his idea has taken off and what could happen then.

They cashed the money they had saved up in vacation time while their tenure with the transit department – Russell in customer service and Alison as a senior secretary – and used it as seed money for their new business, which took about $25,000 to get started.

School officials are calling parents, pulling students out of class and even going to students' homes in a last-ditch effort to get thousands of Valley students vaccinated for whooping cough by the end of this week. The districts hope the push will motivate the families of near 13,000 students to get their teens vaccinated previously a state deadline.