E-Z Dogs To Be Featured On WTAJ-TV

(Above Image by Tanya Brooks) Ezra Brooks being interviewed by WTAJ-TV’s Maggie Smolka

E-Z Dogs had a very special gig on Thursday afternoon, August 18th.

Riverview Intermediate Unit #6, educational service agency on Mayfield Road invited E-Z Dogs (mother and son Tanya and Ezra Brooks) to stop by with their food cart and dish up their special hotdog menu.

Tanya said, “RIU6 asked if Ezra would like to serve lunch at one of their Workday Sessions. Originally I thought I had something else booked that day and I said no. I called them back and said we were available. Deanna Sintobin was the one I communicated with. She reached out to me about doing it.”

Deanna,the Assistant Director of Special Education shared, “We had approximately 80 employees in the building that day and all were excited to have E-Z Dogs serving lunch on the last Act 80 Day.

“We are all so proud of the incredible entrepreneur Ezra has become.”

A special part of the afternoon for Ezra and Tanya, was being interviewed by Altoona’s WTAJ-TV evening news anchor Maggie Smolka, for a special segment, set to air on WTAJ’s 5:00 PM newscast, next Wednesday, August 31st.

Tanya shared, “I’d talked to Maggie from WTAJ before. And she said ‘I’d like to come up next week.’ I said we had something at RIU6 that I thought was perfectly fitting for Ezra, since they played a big role in his education. So it was perfect. It worked for her and it worked for us.”

Tanya (and Ezra) were pretty impressed with Maggie. “She was just really down-to-earth, personable and neat, bubbly. Just a great personality.

Deanna was on hand during the filming to lend her assistance if Maggie needed anything. She was impressed with Maggie’s comprehensive style in covering the story. “She spent a lot of time covering all angles and gathering the details from Ezra and his family about the business. I appreciated her obvious desire to get the whole story.”

Tanya was able to share insight into the background of this great venture, whose mission is to use proceeds to work with special causes benefitting individuals like Ezra, who have Down Syndrome/Trysome21 as well as helping others with special needs.

An outline of what was discussed. “She asked why we were doing it and where the idea came from, why we started the business, where the name came from and just a little about the food cart. She asked me about Ezra’s diagnosis. I gave her a little history of that.

“(Maggie) asked Ezra what his favorite hotdog was and he told her ketchup, mustard and baked beans on top, which she found fascinating. Everyone was, ‘There’s baked beans on the hotdog!”

Tanya estimated that E-Z Dogs served around seventy-five people at the gathering.

If you are in a location whose cable provider doesn’t carry WTAJ-TV, you can still watch the segment as it airs on August 31st, by going to this link to their website: https://www.wearecentralpa.com/news-live-stream/

Once there, click on to the play arrow in the live stream box.

If you aren’t able to watch the segment when it originally airs, you’ll be able to see it by going to this link to Maggie Smolka’s page after the original airing:

https://www.wearecentralpa.com/author/maggie-smolka/

Once there: If you scroll down the page, you’ll see a list of written articles on her news segments. Click on to the article. In addition to the print article, a stream of the segment can be found.

(You may want to try these in advance to acquaint yourself with how they work.)

(Thank you to RIU6, and WTAJ-TV anchor Maggie Smolka. Can’t wait to see the segment!!)