In sports “helmet cams” offer a unique, first-person perspective of events as they happen on the racetrack or the football field.

Now, the San Jose police department is set to become the first in the nation to test out a similar – though much smaller – technology to help officers collect evidence and protect themselves from false allegations of misconduct.

Last week, a few dozen officers attended a demonstration of the cameras, which will be integrated into their uniform, and worn over their ear like a bluetooth. Some cops found the headsets cumbersome, and i tried on several for a stand-up before finding a way to make one fit correctly (lots of napkins stuffed behind my hair to make it snug!). We thought rank and file cops might be opposed to recording their every move in the field. But when so much of what they do is called into question later, and it’s just their word against someone else’s – many officers said they’d welcome the technology as evidence to support their account of events. Right now the department has no set policy about when the cameras must be turned on, though they expect to have very clear guidelines set once this test period is over. I suspect the department will require the cameras be used more often than not, and seriously question those officers who don’t hit “record,” when the action starts.

Few assignments are as fun as those about food trends, and when I was given a story about the boom in “cupcakeries”,  I knew I had the sweetest story of the day.  Cupcakes are more than a fad. Sure, they’re a niche market, but the low prices & high demand are helping gourmet cupcake shops thrive. Most cities today have at least one, with lines of hungry customers that go out the door. Sales reportedly rose nearly 9 % last year, and chains like Sprinkles in LA and Crumbs in New York have dozens of locations. Employing hundreds of people and smaller boutiques are doing well, too in tiny Mill Valley, California, right outside San Francico, Frosting Bake Shop is holding it’s own against the gelato store and Baskin Robbins down the street.

In fact business is going so well, the owner is opening a second, bigger shop, which means a dozen new jobs, from the bakers to drivers to clerks & more taxes for the local economy. This store is one of 600,000 small businesses that opened last year. All told, there are more than 29-million small businesses in the U.S., accounting for more than “half”  of all private sector jobs. In fact, small businesses like Frosting Bake Shop have created 60% of new jobs over the last 15 years.

Now, cupcakes are expanding beyond the specialty gourmet retail shop. The Ritz-Carlton hotel in New York offers a “Cupcake Tea” for $25 dollars. Many restaurants now offer cupcakes on dessert menus and fast food restaurants may be next.  According to some reports, Taco Bell is test-marketing red velvet cupcakes in some Southern California locations!

With their whiskers, distinctive barks, and carefree attitudes, sea lions are really adorable and we’re fortunate in San Francisco to have places along fisherman’s wharf where we can see these animals in the wild, for free.  But as these half ton carnivores overrun working docks and public beaches, they’ve become more of a pest than an attraction.

After an especially strong breeding season, and with plenty of food available, sea lions are thriving … and getting way too close to swimmers like Sarah McCuskey. She showed us where one bit her little toe, and actually laughed about the experience. But fishermen aren’t laughing – sea lion are blocking access to their boats and damaging their docks. These animals can be aggressive and my crew and i kept a safe distance during our LIVE reports. The port of San Francisco plans to install 200-feet of rubber mesh barricade to keep the sea lions off the harbor’s docks, and if that doesn’t work, they’ll blast the animals with loud music, bright lights, and maybe high-pressure hoses.

Crab season starts soon, and scientists say the arrival of more boats, noise and dockside activity may persuade the sun-loving sea lions to leave on their own. No one wants to hurt these wild animals – and they are protected under federal law – but in situations like this, where they really are getting in people’s way, the animals can be “strongly encouraged” to move somewhere else … Maybe over to pier 39 where the sea lions are a huge and highly valued draw for tourists.

Industry experts say card sales have dropped 80% from over a billion dollars in the early 90’s to about $200-million dollars last year. The trend has caused most card makers to shut down, and where there were once 5-thousand card shops in the u-s, today there are fewer than 500. I spoke to industry insiders, retailers, distributors, and collectors to try to figure out what is causing the slide, and lots of factors play into it. Traditional collectors got into the hobby for love of the game, then, over the years, came those who saw it purely as an investment which drove up demand and prices. Half a dozen card companies produced huge quantities – which people bought up as a kind of gamble. But for most, it didn’t pay off. The weak economy, player strikes, and the steroid scandal have all driven down interest and value. A Barry Bonds card once worth 50 or 60 dollars is barely worth $15 now.

On top of that, industry analysts say the future looks bleak because of competition from other card-based games. My son bypasses the sports cards and heads directly for the “magic” and “Pokemon” cards. If he’s interested in knowing more about the giants or a’s or a particular player’s stats – he goes online.
It’s not that the card makers, like tops and upper deck, aren’t trying. We saw some very interesting boxes that hearken back to the days of the old tobacco baseball trading cards, using today’s players on nostalgic backdrops. A box cost about a hundred dollars, which the store manager says isn’t a bad price – problem is, he said, the companies aren’t marketing their product well enough to let people know it’s out there. Others debate that point, saying in a shrinking market, mainstream marketing dollars are increasingly hard to come by.

The good news is – collectors are still out there – just not as many, and they’re not buying as often. We met a young man who began collecting cards with his father, and now specializes in “relic” cards that may feature a players autograph, jersey swatch, or chip of bat they’d used in a game. But there are more sellers than buyers these days, and the store, filled floor to ceiling with dusty trading cards and comic books, was mostly empty. As one collector told me, “I think we’re going to see the cards fade away. I hate to say that, but 20 years from now, people may not know what a baseball card is.”

I have to wonder what it must be like for Sharon Murch to watch dozens of investigators scour the property of Phil and Nancy Garrido in Antioch, California.  Police are looking for any clues that coule tie the Garrido’s to the kidnapping of her daughter, Michaela Garecht, and the disappearance of another Bay Area girl, Ilene Misheloff — Two adorable children who vanished without a trace two decades ago.  Like Jaycee Dugard, Michaela has a long blonde hair and blue eyes …  she was 9-years old when she was snatched outside a supermarket in the Bay Area city of Hayward in 1988. The following year, 13-year-old Micheloff went missing from Dublin, a Bay Area city not far from Antioch. In all three cases, the girls were snatched in broad daylight … from a public place … they were whisked away in an older model Sedan that, according to eye-witness reports, was driven by a white man, and matches the description of a metallic-colored vehicle recently towed away from Phil Garrido’s house. The timing fits, too.  Phil Garrido had just been released on parole a few months before michaela & ilene disappeared, and police believe he was living in the bay area at the time. But the most startling similarity is the police artist sketch of michaela’s abductor, done in 1988. To me, and to police, it bears a striking resemblance to photos of phil garrido from about that same time, from the long hair, to the deep set eyes.. add it all up, it’s giving new hope to michaela’s mother who visited the garrido property yesterday. A purposeful woman who admits she’d given up hope before, sharon murch says garrido’s arrest, and jaycee’s safe return to her mother, is leaving her cautiously optimistic that her daughter can be found, too. With the cops dusting off old files, murch is getting in front of reporters and promoting her website dedicated to finding her daughter. We all want to hope with her, even as we know that garrido’s home has been empty since august, and there’s been no sign of michaela in two decades. It’s possible the garrido’s, or even jaycee, knows something that could help, but it’s unclear how much information they’ve provided, if any. In the meantime, investigators dig up garrido’s so-called “house of horrors,” with desperate mom’s like sharon murch waiting and hoping for any sign that their long nightmare might be over.