A Food Idea 

Take a grassy patch of land, add a bunch of edible plants, herbs, flowers, vines, bushes and trees, and pretty soon it’s a “food forest” where people can harvest a free bite to eat. That’s the idea behind the appetizing new landscaping at Montgomery College’s Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus. Student Tierney Acosta (pictured) spearheaded the project and worked with volunteers to turn about 30,000 square feet of land into an eventual buffet of blueberries, apples, pawpaws, tomatoes, peas and more. Acosta’s hoping to help fellow students at Montgomery College who are facing food insecurity. It’ll take two years for the forest to reach its full potential. We can’t wait to see if other food forests sprout up.

Intersection of Chicago and Philadelphia avenues, Silver Spring

Super Scoops

There are “no angry people at an ice cream shop,” according to Germantown’s Bonnie Cosby, 65, and that’s why she has become a “chief ice cream artisan” in her retirement. Cosby (pictured left), who started Sunshine Creamery in 2022, says she uses milk from South Mountain Creamery in Frederick County and aims to make ice cream that tastes like her grandmother’s. She says she leaves out preservatives, additives, stabilizers and artificial flavors and colors. Pre-scooped cups (about 6 ounces) sell for $6 at farmers markets in the county, and flavors vary based on what her fellow vendors are selling (think cherries) as well as whatever strikes her fancy. Indulging your sweet tooth can also help others—Cosby says she donates 10% of her earnings from the Shady Grove Farmers Market to Rockville Help. 

sunshinecreamerymd.com

Beachy Swings 

Montgomery County’s first outdoor beach tennis court debuted in April at the 18.3-acre Nike Missile Local Park in Gaithersburg. Combining elements of beach volleyball, badminton and traditional tennis, beach tennis just might be the next pickleball. Thanks to an adjustable net system, the sand court also can be used for volleyball matches.

Open sunrise to sunset. Free; first come, first served.
8500 Snouffer School Road, Gaithersburg, montgomeryparks.org/parks-and-trails/nike-missile-local-park

Prints Charming

For the swellest children’s clothes in town, head to the new boutique Pink Chicken. The wee dresses, rompers, swimsuits and other pieces come in sweet patterns, including plenty of summery picks, such as lobsters and ice pops. Girls grab the spotlight here, but boys clothes are on the racks, too. Sizes range from newborn to 14Y. Grown-ups also will find a few options, such as flowy frocks just made for beach days and the occasional shirt for men, maybe adorned with mallards or grilling gear. 

4925 Elm St., Bethesda, 240-967-1742, pinkchicken.com

Patio Upgrade 

Summer is for eating outside, and we’re loving the updated patio at Founding Farmers in Park Potomac. Opened in March, the patio has been expanded from 80 seats to 135 and is accented with basil green pillars and beams and filled with plants. Fans, heaters, retractable sides and a louvered roof extend the outdoor season. Because, really, fall, winter and spring are for outdoor dining, too. 

12505 Park Potomac Ave., Potomac,
301-340-8783, wearefoundingfarmers.com

The post Five things to love in Montgomery County appeared first on MoCo360.

Lilac Luxury 

Bond-Eye “Blake” bikini, $115 (bandeau top) and $90 (hipster bottom) at South Moon Under, 10247 Old Georgetown Road (Wildwood Shopping Center), Bethesda, 301-564-0995, southmoonunder.com

Twice as Nice 
Grace linen two-piece set, $248 at Reformation, 4823 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda, 240-551-5125, thereformation.com

Woven Wonder 
Odna Italian raffia bucket tote, $428 at Johnny Was, 4867 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda, 301-263-3505, johnnywas.com

Under the Sea
Kendra Scott “Shea” statement earrings, $198 at Kendra Scott, 4835 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda, 240-743-2428, kendrascott.com

Hats On 
Embellish Your Life bucket hat, $36 at Jurisdiction, 7937A Tuckerman Lane (Cabin John Village), Potomac, 301-250-6987, jurisdictionclothing.com

Shell Game
Lizzie Fortunato cowrie shell necklace, $395 at Morley, 7112 Bethesda Lane, Bethesda, 301-664-6440, shopmorley.com

Beachy Blue 
Shoshanna tiered midi dress, $395 at Sassanova, 7134 Bethesda Lane, Bethesda, 301-654-7402, sassanova.com

Ibiza Inspired
Stuart Weitzman “Ibiza” slide sandal, $225 at Nordstrom, 7111 Democracy Blvd. (Westfield Montgomery mall), Bethesda, 301-365-4111, nordstrom.com

Sleek Sunnies 
Warby Parker “Aubrey” sunglasses, $95 at Warby Parker, 4821 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda, 240-614-4317, warbyparker.com

The post Go ‘coastal chic’ with these finds appeared first on MoCo360.

For Silver Spring’s Kristina Huddle, cork is useful for more than wine stoppers and bulletin boards—it’s a sustainable material for handbags and accessories.

“About eight years ago I got a small piece of cork fabric and was so intrigued by it—the feel of it,” says Huddle, who describes the texture as slightly squishy, bouncy and buttery. “Everybody that I showed it to was just loving it.”

Huddle’s home-based business, Bozie’s Bags (a nod to her childhood nickname), combines her lifelong love of sewing with providing a sophisticated, environmentally safe alternative to vinyl and leather. Cork fabric is a vegan product, is water-, scratch-, mildew- and bacteria-resistant, and can be spot cleaned. Although Huddle, 54, is not a vegan, she is an animal lover who prefers an eco-friendlier material for her products.

“I like the sustainability,” she says, “but the light weight and the fact that it’s washable are very practical.”

Huddle discovered cork fabric through a Google search for environmentally friendly materials. Since Portugal is the world’s largest cork producer, she says she began importing ethically sourced Portuguese cork fabric made from the cork oak tree, which can be shaved every nine years without causing harm. 

Huddle is so enthusiastic about cork products that she and the assistant to the ambassador of Portugal connected on their mutual love of all things Portuguese when she visited Huddle’s booth at the Olney Farmers and Artists Market. From there, the Portuguese Embassy in Washington, D.C. invited her to present cork products at a 2023 European Union Open House event in the District and again this past May. To highlight aspects of the Portuguese culture and economy, Huddle gave a cork presentation, sold her products, and donated goods for gift bags.

Customers appreciate Huddle’s variety of sizes, shapes and colors, and often field questions from curious friends. “The cork is so unusual—it’s a conversation piece,” says Silver Spring customer Michelle Bouchard. “The quality of her work is amazing; I have purses that I use daily, and they last for years.”

Longtime customer Suzie Friedman met Huddle seven years ago, when their kids attended James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring. Over the years, her purse purchases have expanded. 

At a wedding in Tampa last year, Friedman’s cork handbags turned heads. She brought a roomy, cranberry-hued satchel and a minimalist hunter green “Abigail” crossbody purse. One for lots of items; one for essentials.

“One of the women that I knew was like, ‘Tell me about these bags,’ ” the Silver Spring resident says. “I told her about the bags and she ordered a few—she was able to design and choose her own pattern.” Customization is a feature of Bozie’s Bags, with clients able to select a particular color of cork fabric for their order. 

Huddle, a mother of three and now an empty nester, worked as a social worker for 20 years and enjoyed sewing cotton bags for her daughters’ American Girl dolls as a creative outlet. She started Bozie’s Bags in 2014, but kept her day job until 2016, when she went all in with her small business. 

Huddle’s most popular items are the Abigail crossbody bag ($45) and the Jackie wristlets, which sell for $35. (She names bags after people in her life; Abigail is one of her daughters’ names.) Products are sold on Bozie’s Bags’ website, at the Olney Farmers and Artists Market, Locally Crafted in Gaithersburg, and area festivals and craft shows. Prices range from $15 for a simple card wallet to $150 for larger bags and backpacks. 

“They’re beautiful bags, and they aren’t expensive, or I don’t think I’d own five of them,” Friedman says. 

Huddle says she sells about 1,750 bags and accessories annually, personally sewing each one. When it comes time to make new inventory, she whips up a variety of bags in batches of 40 or 50.

“It’s definitely my go-to for a gift,” Bouchard says. “There can be anything from a small gift for under $20 or a large bag like the one I got for my sister—a new bag for her laptop.”

Working from a studio in her basement, Huddle creates bags with either of two industrial sewing machines. Two part-time employees help cut fabric for purse liners a few hours a week. The small business has grown exponentially over the past five years, and Huddle says she’ll need to make adjustments.

“I can’t keep being the only person who sews these bags—it’s not sustainable,” she says. In order to expand her business, she is considering becoming a distributor of Portuguese cork fabric in America, selling it online to fellow artisans in addition to creating her unique bags. 

“I believe cork is something that should be more readily available here because of its wonderful properties,” Huddle says. “I’ve loved bringing it to the States.” 

The post Silver Spring artist uncorks her creativity with custom bags appeared first on MoCo360.

David Leonhardt is a morning person. He feels freshest writing when the sun is rising and often goes to a coffee shop in Bethesda, where he’s lived for more than 15 years, to work on The Morning, The New York Times’ flagship daily newsletter that he runs. 

A prolific writer, avid reader and deep thinker, Leonhardt has a talent for deconstructing complicated—and occasionally dry—issues and turning them into digestible and entertaining stories for a wide audience.  

“I love being a journalist, but I constantly try to put myself in readers’ shoes,” he says. “What I try to do is say, ‘What are the things that people find confusing in the news? What are things that are more important than the attention they’re receiving?’ I try to think of myself as a representative of readers.” 

Leonhardt loves using multiple methods to illustrate points in a story. Take, for example, his article on “How Peer Pressure Affects Voting” that ran in The Morning on March 22, one of two days Bethesda Magazine interviewed him that month. Typical of a piece in the newsletter, it is conversational in tone, uses infographics, and quotes an array of outside-the-Beltway sources rather than just the usual boldface names.  

“Many Democrats have imagined people of color to be a uniform, loyal, progressive group, defined by their race,” Leonhardt wrote. “They are not. The party will have a better chance to win their votes if it spends more time listening to what these voters believe.” 

It was simply put, with facts and stats to back up his take and a takeaway that leaves no ambiguity. That approach has worked for Leonhardt since he joined the Times a quarter-century ago.  

His success was reinforced when he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2011. The committee cited “his graceful penetration of America’s complicated economic questions.” Yet Leonhardt is just as comfortable talking Walt Whitman High School sports (he’s a big fan of the Bethesda school’s teams) as he is stagflation or the gold standard. That lack of pretension shines through in his writing and has brought him to the loftiest heights in American journalism.  

Bethesda Magazine spoke with Leonhardt via Zoom and phone in March. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

What’s the goal of The Morning? 

I spend a lot of time thinking about that. I think we have a few goals, and they’re connected. The Morning is free. You don’t need to have a New York Times subscription to get it. Most of our readers do not have a subscription. There are two important things to know about people who don’t have a New York Times subscription: One, they can’t click a lot of the links that we put in, and two, on average they probably follow the news a little bit less closely than someone who does have a subscription. That actually fits quite nicely with another kind of theory that I have for the newsletter, which is I think there are a lot of readers out there who are really smart and really interested in the news but are frustrated that the journalism they read sometimes feels like it’s written for experts. It uses too much jargon. It assumes that you have background knowledge about a story. It places too much emphasis on whatever happened yesterday as opposed to trying to put things in a larger context. I think most readers want to have a sense of where the story is headed. So we really try to write for those kinds of readers. When I think about our audience, I think about a very smart person who has very little background knowledge on any given story. 

Do you remember the biggest story that you covered as editor-in-chief for the Yale Daily News? 

There were two. We did a bunch of investigations about allegations of sexual harassment of students by professors. Those stories were really hard to do for obvious reasons. They involved trauma for people…. We also had a presidential search at Yale while I was there. They spent a whole year looking for a new president, and we thought we had gotten the scoop on who the new president was going to be. But the sources were anonymous. We were printed by the New Haven Register. Of course, their print run was a lot larger than ours, so it started well before ours. So when we got to the Register that night, we were able to get a copy coming off the presses. Our first reaction was excitement because they didn’t have the story. And our second reaction was a low-level terror. What if we had it wrong? We didn’t have it wrong. We had it right. Getting it a day early isn’t important in some larger social sense, but it’s part of the thrill of journalism. You’re trying to get information that people don’t want you to have.  

When you first came to Washington as a Post intern in 1994, what was the biggest adjustment for a kid from New York? 

I loved it from the get-go. I found Washington really exciting because I was, and am still, interested in politics. I also liked that Washington has an intimacy to it that New York doesn’t. It’s such a smaller city. In some ways, it’s so much more accessible. New York is maybe the most dynamic city in the world, but it’s not that livable. A lot of places are extremely livable, but they don’t have anywhere near the food—which is really important to me—or the culture that this area does. 

You joined the Times in ’99. How was being a reporter back then different than it is now? Or should I say, are there any similarities from back then to now? 

It’s a great point. The basics of the job are the same. We try to figure out information and explain it. We’re basically the readers’ representative out there, right? That hasn’t changed.  

Obviously, the internet is the biggest difference. Now at the Times we don’t write things the way we used to, which [was] the sort of reverse pyramid style. We don’t write headlines that have to fit in particular [spaces]. We try to be much more conversational with people.  

I do still love the similarities. One of the things I love about The Morning is that it comes out once a day. So like the newspaper, but unlike a lot of digital coverage, we’re not trying to publish 30 different stories on what happened in the stock market or in Gaza or Ukraine today. We’re trying to tell you the most important things that you need to know.  

You won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2011. How were you informed that you won?  

The way it works is the ceremony is on a Monday, but they make the decision on [the previous] Friday. And I don’t know if this is just the big papers that have connections with Columbia University, but they figure out a way to give people a heads-up on Friday. I had known I was afinalist, and actually it was my second straight year of being a finalist. The previous year my direct boss, the business editor, had called me that Friday to say I hadn’t won. 

I had gotten it in my mind this next year that I wasn’t going to win either. So I was expecting that call from my boss again. My cellphone rings and it’s Bill Keller, who [was] the top editor. He said, ‘Hi, David. It’s Bill.’ I got this sort of jolt of adrenaline hearing his voice because I knew that the boss called people [who won the Pulitzer]. Lots was going through my mind. This could be a pity call still. I walked into a hallway in the Washington bureau of the Times and I nervously said, ‘Oh, hi, Bill. How are you?’ He said, ‘I’m not as good as you are, because you just won the Pulitzer.’ And then [my family and I] celebrated by having pizza at [Pete’s New Haven Style Apizza] on Wisconsin Avenue.  

Is it hard to implement change at the Times? From an outsider’s perspective, I imagine that there are a lot of egos and internal politics among the other business concerns that you’re talking about. 

Yes. It is hard, but I’m confident that it is hard to implement change in almost any large, highly successful organization. Because it should be hard to implement change, in some ways, because there’s a reason why these organizations have been so successful, and you don’t want to be undermining them.  

What I have found repeatedly in my career is the best way to make change happen here is to start something new and have it be different. I’ve now done that multiple times. When I became a business columnist in 2006, I wasn’t taking over a column from someone else. It was a brand-new column that the business editor started. He wanted more conversational, easy-to-follow coverage of economics. He didn’t go to the people who are already doing it and say, ‘You all need to change what you’re doing.’ 

And then in 2014, a team of people and I created The Upshot, where we found new ways to [tell stories]. You didn’t have to have a chart to go with an article; you could just make an article that was a chart. We wrote headlines in more conversational ways back when that was innovative. We published stories at 9 a.m. because that’s when most people are online, rather than at 6 p.m. because that allows them to go into the print newspaper.  

The Morning is the third example. When you do new stuff, some of it works, some of it doesn’t. If you go back and look at the early Mornings, a bunch of the stuff we did didn’t work, so we stopped doing it. But a lot does work. It actually can be easier to change the place in a bottom-up way rather than a top-down way. 

We live in such a fractured country politically, and many people get their news from partisan sources. How does that impact your work at the Times, which traditionally has been seen—fair or not—as a liberal outlet? 

I think it’s really vital for us to be independent—and not just in a partisan sense. I actually don’t think we struggle with that. The New York Times has broken more stories that have done career damage to Democrats, in part because most politicians around New York are Democrats. So whether it’s [former New York governors] Andrew Cuomo or Eliot Spitzer, I don’t think we have a problem covering tough news about Democrats. In fact, a lot of readers thought that we over-covered Hillary Clinton’s emails, for example.  

I think where it can be harder, if you just think about our demographics, most of us working at The New York Times are college graduates who live in the major metropolitan areas of New York, Washington or a handful of other cities. Those are people who are living in overwhelmingly liberal milieus. So I do think it’s really important that we be particularly rigorous about interrogating assumptions that might come from liberal America, given that many of us spend more time surrounded by liberal America than conservative America.  

I view that as a crucial part of what The Morning does. We got a fair amount of attention for raising real questions about whether COVID precautions were going too far and whether it was harming kids to be out of school for so long. More recently, my colleague German Lopez wrote pieces saying crime is really rising. I think a lot of liberals were trying to claim, ‘No, no, it’s all just a Fox News claim.’ But no, crime was really rising. And so we wrote that. And I’ve written some pieces recently that have explained how the Biden administration’s policies have contributed to the surge in migration at the border.  

We’ve also written tough pieces about conservatives. So we do it both ways, but I think it’s particularly important to make sure that we are asking tough questions about liberal assumptions.  

The Times ended 2023 with 9.7 million digital-only subscribers. Based on my unscientific conversations with colleagues and friends, as many people get it for the recipes and the games as political coverage. Is that something you envisioned happening? 

I think it’s great, and I actually think it is in keeping with newspapers’ histories. Journalists like to think that the heyday of local newspapers was about coverage of city hall, but really it was mostly about coverage of local sports teams, obituaries, comics and classified ads.  

Yes, people want to be informed. If all they wanted was games, there are many places they could find games. But they also want to be delighted and entertained, and they want highly useful information, like the kind of information that our great cooking staff gives people. We actually think it is very much in keeping with The New York Times’ history, when you think about our crossword puzzle back in the print newspaper, when you think about how popular our print recipes were, when you think about how popular our bridge column used to be.  

Are you a Wordle or Spelling Bee player?  

I am a daily Spelling Bee player. Very, very satisfying to get the pangram. And I play most of the other games a little bit less regularly, including Wordle and Connections. My wife and I do Spelling Bee together, usually in the morning with a cup of coffee. I am satisfied when we get to genius, but she’s better at it than I am. On the rare day where we get to genius without the pangram, her attitude is we haven’t solved it.  

Are you concerned with the state of journalism when it comes to local news? 

I am concerned with the state of local news. I’m lucky that I live in the rare metropolitan area where a national news source is also a local news source, which is The Washington Post. One of the things I read every day is the Washington Post sports section. I read Bethesda Magazine. I read Washingtonian magazine.  

The New York Times has a business model at this point that looks pretty solid. And even if we were to do a bad job over the next 20 years, the idea that there’s a national audience of people who want high-quality news, that’s now been proven.  

There isn’t a model for local journalism at this point, and I am deeply worried about it because democracy functions much better when we have journalists covering local school boards and local government and local companies. Political scientists have shown that when local newspapers leave, corruption goes up, polarization goes up, voter turnout appears to go down.  

I’m glad to see, though, that there seems to be a lot of energy around trying to find new models, like nonprofit news sources like The Baltimore Banner. So I’m a little bit hopeful, but it’s a huge problem. 

You’ve worked for the Times for 25 years, and you’ve seen dramatic change at your publication and in the industry. Do you care to hazard a guess on what the state of journalism will be at the Times and elsewhere 25 years from now? 

I would guess that 25 years from now The New York Times will be very strong. I would guess we would have substantially more digital subscribers than we now have. I would guess that the technology will make some leap that we can’t even fully fathom right now. So maybe it won’t be on our phone. Maybe it’ll be the kind of holograms people imagined where you’ll have a ring that basically projects something onto the table where you’re sitting. I have no idea. And although it’ll make me very sad because I love print, I would guess that there will not be a daily print newspaper in 25 years. As a journalist, actually, that doesn’t bother me because what I care about is that people are reading what I’m doing, not where they’re doing it. But as a reader, I still love print because print never runs out of battery. You can’t have alerts pop up and distract you with print.  

You mentioned that restaurants were important to you. What are some of your favorites in our area?  

Oh, I love this question. I love Vace for takeout pizza. We spend a lot of time eating Chinese food in Rockville. Sichuan Jin River in Rockville. We love Olazzo in Bethesda. We love food.  

This story appears in the July/August edition of Bethesda Magazine.

The post Bethesda Interview: Meet David Leonhardt of The New York Times appeared first on MoCo360.

The Montgomery County Council has approved new rules that simplify the permitting process for opening a new restaurant. Local restaurant owners have long complained about the bureaucracy involved in opening an eatery. [Source of the Spring]

Lender assumes control of downtown Silver Spring complex

Ownership of Station Square, a three-building complex in downtown Silver Spring, went back to the lender after a public auction Wednesday. The buildings are located at 1010 and 1100 Wayne Ave. and 8484 Georgia Ave., about a block from the Silver Spring Metro station. [Washington Business Journal]

Large water main break leaves Olney residents without water  

A large water main break in Olney closed a road and left residents without water Thursday morning, according to authorities. [WJLA]

Today’s weather: Partly sunny, with a high near 88

In case you missed it:

MCPS superintendent apologizes for treatment of families regarding closure of Montgomery Virtual Academy

‘Unprecedented’ theft prompts new security measures in local Giant Food stores

Brooklyn teen charged in gold bar scam involving Silver Spring 82-year-old

The post County Council simplifies restaurant permitting process to reduce delays appeared first on MoCo360.

An increase in shoplifting at Giant Food stores in Montgomery County has prompted the regional grocer to enhance security protocols in some of its stores.

“Giant Food has initiated new policies at select stores that are experiencing high shrink to mitigate the unprecedented levels of product theft that have become unsustainable for our business,” Giant Food spokesperson Jon Arons said in an email to MoCo360. “The retail theft we are experiencing across our market area is a problem that affects everyone. It limits product availability, creates a less convenient shopping experience, and, most critically, puts our associates and customers in harm’s way.”

Shoplifting in county retail stores has been on the rise over the past few years, county police spokesperson Casandra Tressler said. “Any reported thefts are investigated,” she said.

On June 25, a clerk at a Giant Food store on Arlington Road in Bethesda was punched in the face when a robbery suspect allegedly tried unsuccessfully to return stolen goods for cash. Montgomery County police are searching for the man who allegedly took off with an undisclosed amount of cash, according to a July 3 statement.

Between 2021 and 2022, shoplifting in retail stores, which includes grocery stores, increased by nearly 28%, from 2,425 to 3,100 reported cases, according to the county police department’s 2022 Annual Report on Crime and Safety.

From 2022-2023, all shoplifting incidents increased by nearly 41%, Tressler said. Police did not provide the overall number of reported cases for 2023. 

The number of reported grocery store thefts between 2022 and 2023 grew by about 48%, according to data provided by police. There were 427 reported thefts in 2022 and 630 in 2023. Reported cases for 2024 are on pace to exceed the number reported in 2023, according to police.

Giant Food, Safeway and Whole Foods Market are among the grocers with stores throughout the county. When contacted by MoCo360, Safeway officials declined to provide information about theft in their stores and security measures they may have taken. Whole Foods Market did not return a MoCo360 request for comment.

‘It’s scary’

“It’s scary. No place is safe anymore, everywhere you go,” said an eight-year employee of the Colesville Giant Food at 13490 New Hampshire Ave. in Silver Spring. The customer service agent asked to remain anonymous. “The theft is very bad lately.”

She said employees are instructed not to follow the shoplifters. Instead, they are told to log information about a suspect, including a physical description, in a designated journal at the customer service desk. She said the store also has a part-time security guard that floats between stores.

“We have a security camera, so we know when they are coming,” she said.

A spokesperson for the union that represents Giant Food employees said the union is concerned about workers’ safety and worries that Giant Food, and other grocery stores represented by the union, are not reporting the full volume of theft to police.

“Anecdotally, we are concerned that they are not reporting it,” said Jonathan Williams of United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 400. “There is talk from some of the companies about how we need stricter laws and harsher punishments. But if you’re not calling the cops in the first place, what’s the good of stricter punishment?”

Security in stores

Williams said meetings with shop stewards in recent months revealed that grocery store employees are being asked to work security duties. “Sometimes something as simple as standing at the front of the door,” he said.

Some employees have reported being threatened with weapons and being verbally abused, Williams said. The union represents members in Maryland; Virginia; Washington, D.C.; West Virginia; Ohio; Kentucky; and Tennessee.

Three weeks ago, the union launched an online reporting campaign that allows store employees to note when they have been asked to work as security. Before the Fourth of July holiday weekend, Williams said about five incidents had been reported.

“We think those numbers grossly underrepresent the reality,” he said.

When asked by MoCo360, Giant Food did not directly respond to the union’s allegation that it asks its employees to work security duties.

Some Giant Food stores in the county already have security officers in their stores. A spokesperson from Giant Food said the company uses Myles Davis Protection Services for its Montgomery County stores.

“The solution isn’t always obvious, but starting with security in the store seems like a no-brainer,” Williams said.

A full-time security guard at the Giant Food at 12028 Cherry Hill Road in Silver Spring, who identified himself as Officer Crutchfield, said the physical presence of a security officer in the store is a deterrent and helps prevent theft.

“My job is to provide customer service and protection to customers, and provide documentation to police when needed,” Crutchfield said.

At the Giant Food at 2900 West University Blvd. in Wheaton, the security officer is armed. The store also has closed one of its two entrances.

A customer service representative at the store, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said management installed an armed guard at the Wheaton store a little over a year ago. Previously, the security officer wasn’t armed, the clerk said.

She is optimistic the presence of an armed guard is deterring would-be thieves, noting the store has eliminated the morning security shift.

“It used to be we had security officers for an a.m. shift and a p.m. shift,” she said. “But about a month ago, we went to just p.m.”

Arons did not respond directly when asked by MoCo360 whether placing armed guards in stores was common and when additional security measures were implemented.  

“We continuously assess all our stores and take appropriate actions based on the current situation. The unfortunate reality is that retail crime and related violence are on the rise. Although we do not disclose specific store details, we face increasingly high levels of unsustainable theft,” he said. “Our top priority is the safety of our associates and customers. Our training emphasizes the importance of using sound judgment and avoiding situations that could endanger our team or customers while protecting our products.”

At the Giant Food in Leisure World of Maryland in Silver Spring, the self-checkout clerk said theft was such a problem that the store removed the five-cent plastic bags from the self-checkout area.

Customers were required to scan their groceries, set them aside, and then seek out the self-checkout clerk to purchase the number of bags needed.

On June 21, a customer lambasted a manager, complaining that he was being punished for someone else’s crime. Within five days, the bags had returned to the self-checkout area. Staff at the customer service desk said the bags had returned after customers complained about the inconvenience of the new bagging system.

“We need to be able to run our stores safely and profitably, and we take these responsibilities seriously. The tactics we deploy are only one of the solutions to our problem,” Arons said.

The post ‘Unprecedented’ theft prompts new security measures in local Giant Food stores appeared first on MoCo360.

A CVS store on Wayne Avenue in downtown Silver Spring that installed locks on its refrigerators now requires customers to notify an employee if they wish to purchase a drink. The company said it uses “a variety of different measures to deter or prevent theft and locking a product is a measure of last resort.” [News4]

New county police chief sworn in

Marc Yamada was officially sworn in on Monday as the new Montgomery County police chief. Yamada brings 35 years of law enforcement experience and most recently served as the Assistant Chief of the Field Services Bureau. [MoCo Show]

1,200 books collected for children

A book drive by Inspiring Young Readers led to more than 1,200 books being collected for children age 7 and younger in the county. The months-long collection was held at Flower Valley Elementary School in Rockville. [ABC7]

Today’s weather: Partly cloudy, with a high of 86 degrees

In case you missed it:

MoCo Olympians to Watch: Runners Russell, Wilson earn trip to Paris; Gymnast DiCello injured

Local fire safety officials warn against illegal fireworks use

Office of the Attorney General to delay release of footage in fatal officer-involved shooting

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In February 2019, an article online caught the eye of Bethesda business executive and attorney Lisa Friedlander. It was about a new investor group called Citrine Angels, whose mission was to connect novice female investors with early-stage, women-led startups. Friedlander quickly emailed the founder, Allyson Redpath, to offer her support. 

“For decades…the percentage of capital—venture capital—going to female founders has been 2% or under,” says Friedlander, who co-founded an online marketplace for summer camps and other activities for kids called Activity Rocket in 2013 and then sold the business four years later to Thrively, a California-based education technology platform. “When I launched and grew and sold my company…[I] experienced firsthand the discrimination and difficulties of female founders raising capital.”  

Fast forward to today, and Friedlander is one of Citrine Angels’ principals. Named after the gemstone believed to promote prosperity, Citrine Angels has a dual purpose: It provides female-founded startups around the country with access to capital, and it teaches financially secure women throughout the D.C. area how to become successful angel investors.  

“The idea is to create more women angel investors,” says Friedlander, who, along with two Northern Virginia women, took the helm in late 2019, after Redpath stepped aside to accept a high-ranking position with the Maryland Department of Commerce.   

To be considered an accredited—or angel—investor by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, an individual must have a net worth (spouses included) of more than $1 million, excluding their primary residence, or individual income of more than $200,000 for the past two years. Citrine Angels members also must meet these requirements.

A $995 annual fee gives them access to monthly virtual pitch presentations, as well as monthly in-person networking gatherings and educational opportunities that focus on everything from portfolio-building strategies to evaluating a startup for its investment potential. The group has a Bethesda mailing address, but its events are held either online or at sites around the D.C. area.  

The nonprofit’s 80 members aren’t required to make regular investments, though they are encouraged to make at least a small investment every year—“as low as 5 and 10K,” Friedlander says.  

The way it works: Citrine Angels accepts applications from female-led startups. A committee then vets each company, and those that pass the initial review are given the opportunity to pitch the group. If there’s enough interest in the startup from Citrine Angels’ members, then a lengthier due diligence process begins, with a deep dive into the startup’s financials, the marketplace for its product or services, and its leadership team. Once the due diligence report is shared with members, each decides whether she is interested in investing—either directly into the startup if the dollar amount she chooses to put up meets the startup’s minimum investment threshold, or by pooling funds and investing together. Upon investment, Citrine Angels adds the company to its portfolio.  

As minority shareholders, Citrine Angels’ members typically see a return on their investment when the startup is acquired by another entity, generally within three to seven years, according to Friedlander. 

“[We’re] looking closely at who the founders are…we have to really believe that these founders have what it takes to grow a company to be successful,” says Lisa Conners, a Bethesda-based
executive-leadership coach who became a member two years ago.  

According to a 2018 Boston Consulting Group study, female-founded or co-founded businesses have an average rate of return of 78 cents for every dollar invested, compared to male-founded startups, which have an average rate of return of only 31 cents. 

Since its inception in 2019, Citrine Angels has provided more than $1.25 million in capital to approximately 20 female-founded or co-founded companies across the country, in industries from consumer products to artificial intelligence to financial and medical technologies. Bethesda-based Pocket Naloxone Corp., which became part of Citrine Angels’ portfolio in 2020, is focused on developing an easy-to-use, lower cost, over-the-counter naloxone product to help in the battle to prevent deaths from opioid overdoses. It was Friedlander’s first personal investment as a Citrine Angel. “A huge game changer and an incredible opportunity to save lives,” Friedlander says about the startup.     

Citrine Angels also provided capital to help Bethesda entrepreneur Julie Melnick expand SkySquad, the company she founded to provide airport travelers with personal assistants who can carry their bags, help ease their way through security and TSA lines, and navigate their way through the airport. The service is offered at five airports around the country, including Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.  

When Melnick first pitched Citrine Angels for funding, the organization took a pass; Friedlander told her to “show us some traction” with customers first, Melnick says. She heeded the advice, and when she pitched the group again two years later, in 2021, her company came away with about $35,000 from Citrine Angels members, in a round of financing that netted approximately $1 million in all, she says. 

“The whole experience of running a startup, I believe, is really mindset and believing that…your service or your product is really worth something,” Melnick says. With Citrine Angels, she adds, a whole group of women are investing their hard-earned money to support a business, and “it’s really a vote of confidence.”

This story appears in the May/June edition of Bethesda Magazine.

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Station Square, a three-building office complex in downtown Silver Spring is scheduled to be sold June 18 at a public auction. The three towers at 1010 and 1100 Wayne Ave. and 8484 Georgia Ave. are near the Silver Spring Metro and Purple Line light-rail stations. [Washington Business Journal]

Four with serious injuries after two-vehicle crash in Brookeville

Four people suffered serious injuries in a two-vehicle collision Saturday night in Brookeville, according to the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service. The crash occurred before 10 p.m. on New Hampshire Avenue near Gaithers Meadow Lane. [WJLA]

Downtown Bethesda mourns loss of beloved dog who rode on pedicab

Many in downtown Bethesda are mourning the death Wednesday of Rudder, who was a popular sight over the years in the community as he rode the streets in a pedicab attached to the bike of his owner, Richard Hoye. [WTOP]

Today’s weather:  Mostly sunny, with a high near 78

In case you missed it:

Layoffs of up to 150 MCPS educators ‘unlikely,’ county teachers union says

Brawl after Kennedy High graduation ‘an embarrassment to our community,’ principal says

Former Wootton High student indicted by grand jury on threats of mass violence charge

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New York native Melina Bellows now lives in the Palisades neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where she applies her considerable experience as a journalist at Ladies’ Home Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan and as the former longtime publisher of National Geographic Kids to her own Fun Factory Press, a local firm specializing in children’s nonfiction. Bellows, 58, lives by words of wisdom delivered to her in her 20s by two people you might have heard of.

I was going through a bad breakup with a boyfriend, and there I was in Chicago interviewing Oprah [Winfrey] for Ladies’ Home Journal. And because it’s Oprah, you have a real conversation, you know? And she told me that when anything bad happens to you, it’s actually a gift if you ask the situation what it has to teach you.

That really did a couple of things for me. First of all, it stopped the pity party. And instead of saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t get that job’ or ‘I made a fool of myself for doing that,’ it puts you in the power seat to say, ‘What can I take from this? What can I learn from it?’ It has you thinking about the future instead of thinking about the past. That was really powerful to me. If something bad happens to you, it’s not necessarily bad: It has something to teach you.

When Oprah gave me that advice, it made me think about the way I spoke to myself, and it made me aware that I had a really negative voice running in my head. I was suddenly aware of that and I could turn it off, or at least ignore it. ‘Don’t believe everything you think,’ right?

I have since learned that Oprah got that advice from someone who mentored her: Dr. Maya Angelou. Oprah said she was whining or crying about something, and Dr. Angelou said, ‘You stop that crying right now. This is a gift.’ So Dr. Angelou gave her tough love, and Oprah passed it on to me and I continue to pay it forward to my young interns.

A second story: I interviewed my all-time idol, [author and filmmaker] Nora Ephron, who took me under her wing a little bit. In my 20s, I was looking for love and going about it in all the wrong ways, and Nora taught me—like Oprah did—when something bad happens to you, it’s actually great, because you can make a great story out of it later. She taught me to take the bad stuff that happens to you and use it. 

She also said the worse the thing is, the more people want to hear about it. She said people love hearing about terrible things that happen to other people, and she should know: She wrote Heartburn, which was about the demise of her marriage to [journalist] Carl Bernstein. And it became an incredible movie starring Meryl Streep.

This story appears in the May/June edition of Bethesda Magazine.

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