Vet goes from serving country to serving ice cream

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

VAIL, Ariz. — In the span of several months, entrepreneur and Air Force veteran Sean Collins has gone from serving his country to serving ice cream at his own Dairy Queen.

He and his wife Tracy are chillin’ as the first Arizona recipients of a new Patriot Express loan offered by the Small Business Administration just for vets.

“We had been planning this for quite a while,” he said in an interview at his new ice cream eatery last week in Vail, Ariz., seated comfortably in what is probably the largest lobby you’ll ever see in a Dairy Queen.

Collins was in the Air Force for almost 22 years, stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base from 1999 until he retired as a senior non-commissioned officer in 2003.

Tracy Collins, a real estate agent, worked her first job at a Dairy Queen during high school and college, and the couple loved the idea of giving other young people in their fast-growing area a shot at their first jobs as well, Sean said.

Last spring they left their four children — two teens and two preschoolers — in the care of family and friends for three weeks while they attended Dairy Queen school in Minneapolis.

“The hardest thing about the training, for me, was making the cone,” Sean Collins said.