Gift Cards

City officials are offering a trade: groceries for guns. This Saturday, Klein's ShopRite will give a $100 gift certificate to anyone who turns in a firearm. The "Goods for Guns" buyback will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Coldstream Homestead Montebello Community Corp. headquarters, located on the campus of City College. "Every single gun we get out of our neighborhoods is a success," said City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young, who helped organize the event.

Cheryl Knauer has a restaurant gift card in mind for her in-laws, a massage gift card planned for another family member and intends to pick up cards in smaller dollar amounts to Chick-fil-A and Starbucks for kids' stockings and teachers' gifts. The Parkville mother of three told family members seeking ideas for her hard-to-shop-for 11-year-old to buy him gift cards too - maybe from Target or GameStop. Knauer, director of media relations at McDaniel College in Westminster, said she's feeling less rushed this Christmas season because she can easily grab the gifts, even at the last minute.

Consumers in Maryland should watch out for text messages alerting recipients that they've won a high-priced gift card to a store. The messages are part of a widespread "smishing" scam, a combination of "SMS," or Short Message Service, and "phishing," the act of fraudulently acquiring information through e-mail, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said today. "Scams like these tend to pop up around the holidays when consumers are shopping more and looking for bargains," Gansler said in a statement.

This is a tender-hearted time of year, and it is easy to reach into our wallets for the children of the poor, or the homeless and the hungry. But there is another group that deserves our charity at Christmas, and it is the elderly, many of whom have out-lived those who might care for them at the holidays. This is the season for "Be a Santa to a Senior," my new favorite cause. Organized by Paul and Laurie Hogan, founders of Home Instead, which provides non-medical, in-home care for seniors, the program has collected more than a million gifts for more than 700,000 elderly in the country over the past eight years, including about 9,500 seniors in Maryland.

Every good teacher deserves a gift   - rare tokens of appreciation for their hard work. But, Andrea Segovia, third-grade teacher at Ashburton Elementary School in Bethesda, was a little concerned when she unwrapped an expensive-looking necklace stuffed in a Ziploc baggie. She suspected the “gift” from a boy in her classroom probably came from his mother's jewelry box. She was right. “I could just tell that it was someone else's necklace,” Segovia says. Almost every teacher has at least one story of the unusual holiday gift.

Many people find the holiday season to be a time to share their blessings with the less fortunate. Local organizations and advocacy groups such as those below would put your gift to good use. • Lovely Ladies of Laurel is a nonprofit organization committed to providing mentoring services to young ladies residing in Laurel and the surrounding areas. L3 seeks to promote responsibility, respect and academic rigor to a diverse group of young ladies within the community. http://www.lovelyladiesoflaurell3.org . Wish List: Coats, coat drive underway until Dec. 17. Drop off Mondays between 6:30 and 8 p.m. at the second trailer at Laurel High School, 8000 Cherry Lane.

A "Celebration of Junella Spencer's Life," honoring the longtime volunteer who aided Shepherd's Staff and other nonprofits in the county, will be held Tuesday, Nov. 20, beginning at 6 p.m. at the Greene Turtle Westminster, 830 Market St., Westminster The restaurant is donating 10 percent of proceeds, and a portion will benefit Shepherd's Staff, the Westminster-based nonprofit that helps families in need with clothing, food and other necessities....

A 16-year-old Columbia boy was charged in an armed robbery of a man who retrieving mail from a community mail box on Wednesday evening. Police said Dymtro Klopp, 16, of Dove Cote Drive, was with two other teens in the 10400 block of Fair Oaks in Columbia on Wednesday when they approached the victim, placed a gun against the victim's head and demanded money. The victim handed over his wallet, which contained credit cards, gift cards and an undisclosed amount of cash. The victim was able to give police a detailed description of Klopp, which police recognized from other recent incidents.

Sheila, Sheila, Sheila ... Girlfriend? You are making us look bad. Ms. Dixon, who resigned as mayor of Baltimore in a plea deal that required her to make $45,000 in donations to charity, is behind - way behind - in her payments, and she's in danger of a probation violation that could cost her a $83,000-a-year pension and perhaps even send her to jail. That would pretty much scuttle her undisguised ambition to return to City Hall. If it is true that a woman has to be twice as good as a man to succeed, it is also true that she has to be twice as clean, and Ms. Dixon was anything but. She was convicted of pocketing $500 in gift cards intended for the poor, but that's hardly the end of her misdeeds.

Former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon could face the loss of her city pension — and possibly prison time — after being charged with a probation violation connected to a plea deal she struck on perjury and theft allegations. Dixon was $13,640 behind on payments toward a $45,000 charitable donation she agreed to make as part of the deal, according to records maintained by the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. The new legal trouble threatens to derail what some had speculated was a nascent political comeback by the former mayor.