Odds and Ends

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Police followed a trail of doughnuts to find a stolen Krispy Kreme delivery truck.

"It has a happy ending," Swatara Township Sgt. Robert Simmonds said. "The evidence was brought back to the police station, and the cops are eating the doughnuts."

It was 12:45 a.m. Thursday when Krispy Kreme deliveryman Tim Trostle stopped at a Swatara Township convenience store and left the engine running as he made the delivery. Someone fled with the truck, but since Trostle had left the back doors open, police were able to follow a trail of doughnuts.

The doughnut trail ended before long, but police in a nearby township found a doughnut cart near the Harrisburg city line. City police found the truck near a downtown bar.

No arrests were immediately made. The truck was returned to the company.

Although Simmonds had been joking about police taking the contents of the truck, he acknowledged seeing Krispy Kreme doughnuts in a station conference room Thursday.

"I suspect that the manager from the Krispy Kreme might have given us a little thank you for our efforts," he said.

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PISMO BEACH, Calif. - He's a plastic millionaire.

Walter Cavanagh - also known as "Mr. Plastic Fantastic" - has a wallet nearly as long as a football field to carry his credit cards.

Cavanagh owns 1,497 valid credit cards (he assumes a card is valid until he hears otherwise) with a potential credit line of about $1.7 million.

The retired real estate broker, who lives in the small San Luis Obispo County community of Shell Beach, said his collecting began with a bet more than three decades ago.

He and a friend were sitting in his apartment in 1969 and bet who could collect the most credit cards. The loser would buy dinner.

Cavanagh managed to obtain 143 cards in a year and got a rib-eye steak dinner. He also caught the plastic bug.

He has become so good at collecting the cards that he has a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, which gave him his nickname.

He also holds the title for the world's longest wallet - a 38-pound monster that is 250 feet long and can hold 800 cards.

Most of his collection is kept in bank safe deposit boxes.

His cards include antiques in paper and aluminum. A number are from long-defunct department stores, gas stations and bars. They come from as far away as Germany and Spain.

"Most cards are from such obscure places, you've never heard of them," Cavanagh said.

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SALT LAKE CITY - Grant Petersen tried to give officials his two cents - in the form of 8,200 cents.

Petersen withdrew $82 worth of pennies from his bank and delivered them in a bucket to pay an $82 fine he got for driving with a burnt-out headlight.

Court officials are apparently unamused, and have asked Petersen to offer a more "acceptable" form of payment. They say state policy allows clerks to reject unusual forms of payment, and it's going to waste county resources for someone to count all that change.

Petersen says he doesn't plan to honor that request. He says money is money, and U.S. law provides that coins are legal tender.

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MIAMI - A nurse's aide who quit her job to take a cruise hit the jackpot.

Carol Baird won a $321,694 slot machine jackpot aboard a Carnival Cruise Lines ship off the U.S. Virgin Islands early Wednesday.

Baird, 59, quit her job after realizing she had booked her cruise in violation of her company's policy prohibiting personal vacation time seven days before or after a holiday.

"When I booked the cruise, I didn't look at the calendar," Baird said Thursday.

So she decided to quit her job at a nursing home after 17 years.

Baird said she was playing the ship's MegaCash machine, featuring a fleet-wide progressive jackpot, with her husband gaming next to her. Initially she didn't realize she had struck the bonanza.

"Now I'm glad I did (quit)," she said.

Baird said she was going to get the jackpot payout in installments over six years "so I don't have to work."