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Community Safety Fair Coming Up In Jefferson County

GOLDEN, Colo. (CBS4) - This weekend CBS4 is partnering with the Jefferson County District Attorney's office for a Community Safety Fair.

"We like to prevent victims from becoming victims," Scott Storey, the District Attorney of Jefferson County told CBS4.

It's one-stop shopping for all kinds of great safety information.

"It's really about providing information for consumers that they rarely can find elsewhere," said Cary Johnson, a fraud investigator with the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office.

This is the fourth year of this free, community event. Last year, cars lined up to drop of hundreds of pounds of personal documents to be shredded. The free shredding program was so popular, that three shredding trucks filled up in less than an hour.

"This is for consumers. This is for you and me or a small business in your home. This is not for a big corporation that saves their documents," said Storey.

This year there will be some changes to the shredding program to make it a better experience. There will be four trucks on-site. There is a 5-box limit on each vehicle. And there will be a separate entrance and exit for those who want to take advantage of the shredding.

In all there are 80 vendors on site offering a wide variety of health and safety information. You can get your credit report printed out and go over it with a volunteer banker to make sure everything is accurate. There will be bike safety demonstrations, and fire extinguisher explanations, and car seat safety instructions.

You can even recycle small electronics. The Jefferson County District Attorney's Office collects old cell phones. They send them off to a Florida company that wipes them clean of personal information and re-programs them for calling 9-1-1. Then the phones are distributed to seniors, so they have a lifeline where ever they go. So far the program has given out 900 free cell phones.

"The technology allows those phones to come back to us, so I always tell the older adults, 'You can't call for pizza. You can't call your kids. But you can make a 911 call.'," Johnson said.

Another popular program at the Safety Fair is the prescription drug round-up. Armed police officers are on hand to help collect narcotics and other old, out-of-date prescription drugs. Soon the Federal Government will be giving up the Take Back program in favor of a more permanent daily deposit for old drugs.

"The key to this is we don't want people flushing those down the toilet, getting into our ground water. We don't want those being stolen, especially narcotics and then finding a place on the street, so here's a safe place to come and know that those prescriptions will be disposed of properly," Johnson explained.

The goal of the day is to bring all the health and safety information a family needs to one convenient location.

"Take away learning something that they'll think about though out the year, that... who knows..might save lives," Storey said.

The Community Safety Fair takes place on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds.

LINK: Free Community Safety Fair and Shred-a-thon

RELATED: More Reports By 4 On Your Side Consumer Investigator Jodi Brooks

- Written for the Web by CBS4 Special Projects Producer Libby Smith

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