Playboy Mansion Tour Among Items for Bid in Silent Witness Charity Auction

Sex sells -- and it does a bang-up job at raising funds for charity, too. The Silent Witness police hotline is having charity auction this week, and the top item for bid is a tour for four of the legendary Playboy Mansion...

By Ray Stern

April 21, 2009

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Sex sells -- and it does a bang-up job at raising funds for charity, too.

The Silent Witness police hotline is having charity auction this week, and the top item for bid is a tour for four of the legendary Playboy Mansion.

Getting second billing on the Silent Witness auction Web site is the chance to be "cop for a day," with a leisurely helicopter ride, squad car ridealong and lunch with a command staff member. (If you pass a background check, that is). Sports memorabilia, tires and dinner served by local chef Eddie Matney are also available for bid.

You can bid on some items right away from the Web site. Radio station KDKB (93.3 FM) will host a special morning show from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Friday to raise funds for the Silent Witness program. Donations go to the Valleywide program, which offer rewards for crime information and publicizes high-profile, unsolved cases.

Phoenix police Sergeant Paul Penzone (at right), who has been in charge of the Silent Witness program for several years, hopes the charity event is a good one -- he's retiring in June after more than 20 years on the force. He's taking a job with Scottsdale-based Childhelp, leading their national programs to prevent and heal child-abuse cases.

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Ray Stern is the former news editor of Phoenix New Times. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Arizona for more than two decades. He's won numerous awards for his reporting, including the Arizona Press Club's Don Bolles Award for Investigative Journalism.