"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.
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.
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.
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."
BELLE VERNON, Pa. - A man accused of pointing a loaded handgun at a police officer says he's only guilty of wearing tight jeans.
Sean Eldon Duvall, 36, was arrested Tuesday on charges including aggravated assault and reckless endangerment for the June 18 incident.
Southwest Regional Police Detective Sgt. James Rega said in court papers that Duvall left his car with the .38-caliber revolver hidden under papers and aimed it at him when he stopped to see if Duvall needed help.
Duvall told The Associated Press that he didn't need help; he said he was just stepping out of his car to go to a friend's house to play chess.
Duvall acknowledged he had his gun with him, but said he has a permit to carry it, which he tried to show Rega. By law, the gun must be concealed, but Duvall said he couldn't conceal it under his pants while sitting in his car because his jeans were too tight.
Duvall said that's why he left the car with the gun sandwiched among some magazines.
"The magazines were the bread and the gun was the meat," he said.
A district justice is scheduled to hear both sides of the story on Dec. 15.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Poor Rudolph won't join in any reindeer games in North Carolina this holiday season.
State wildlife officials worried about chronic-wasting disease - the deer-family equivalent of mad cow disease - have banned the transportation of deer, elk, caribou and reindeer within the state. They have also blocked the import of the animals from other states in an effort prevent the spread of the disease to the wild deer population.
That keeps deer farmers from moving the animals to Christmas parties, hayrides and other holiday events and is costing some of them thousands of dollars.
The rules are a reaction to a fatal disease that has infected deer in at least 12 states, devastating entire herds. The state Wildlife Commission approved temporary rules two years ago designed to stop the disease from being carried into North Carolina. The rules became permanent this summer.
VICTORIA, British Columbia - A 62-year-old man described by his publisher as a prison Houdini for 13 escapes from custody will have another opportunity to hone his craft.
Lorne Wayne Carlson, author of "Breakfast with the Devil: The story of a professional jailbreaker," is going back to the slammer, this time for illegal possession of a handgun. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty Monday in British Columbia Supreme Court.
Carlson was on parole in July when he was tackled by police investigating a domestic dispute and a loaded handgun fell out of his pants.
"I deeply regret having that handgun, your honor, and I will never possess another gun in my life," he told Justice Robert Hutchison.
The judge was unmoved. "You are getting too old for a life of crime and incarceration," Hutchison said. "It's time to give it up."
Carlson, who has an extensive record for robbery and other crimes in Canada and the United States, has spent about 35 years in prison. His publisher, Insomniac Press, contends he's the prisoner with the most escapes in modern North American history.
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