(Enlarge) Kelly McCoy found a pearl necklace under a book shelf at the Towson Library. It turned out to be a gift in the "Finders Keepers" promotion conducted by Nelson Coleman Jewelers. The company placed gifts in public places around the Towson area. (Submitted photo by Ruth Schaefer)

Kelly McCoy not only looked a gift horse in the mouth, she actually called a security guard.

McCoy, a librarian at the Towson Library, first noticed the plastic bag peeking out from under the display of new paperback books at about 11 a.m. on Dec. 10.

She thought somebody had dropped it. She could see it contained a small box wrapped in silver paper and topped with a bow. As soon as she saw it, she knew somebody had lost a really nice present.

She called a security guard over.

"I wanted someone to see me pick it up," she said.

As she and the guard walked to the circulation manager's office, she read a small tag attached to the bag. It said:

"Finders Keepers ... This year, we thought Santa Claus might need a hand during these extraordinary times, we're happy to help."

The package, it turned out, was from Nelson Coleman Jewelers, located a few blocks away at 307 E. Joppa Road.

The note revealed that the store was hiding one elegantly wrapped silver package in a public place through Christmas day.

"No strings attached. Finders Keepers! The jewelry is real, the gift is yours, the pleasure is ours," the noted said.

"Merry Christmas."

McCoy asked her supervisor if she should look in the box.

"Open it, open it," her supervisor said.

She did.

It contained a set of freshwater pearls.

"I loved them," McCoy said last week. "They just made my day. To think, a stranger had given me this wonderful present."

In fact, wearing the 17-inch strand of pearls made her smile all day long.

"People kept saying how nice I looked -- jewelry always looks good on a woman," she said. "But it probably was because I was smiling."

The note requested that the finder contact the jewelry store and reveal where the gift was found. The folks at Nelson Coleman were delighted to meet McCoy when she visited the store that afternoon.

Each of store's 16 employees had chosen a different place to leave a similar strand of White Rose luster 6.5 millimeter pearls. They retail for $60. Among other places, strands were secreted away in a hospital emergency room, by a courtroom bench, at a playground and on a shelf in a grocery store.

Chris Coleman, one of the store's owners, said the idea was borrowed from a jewelry store in Texas that did something similar.

"It's been a tough year for a lot of folks," he said. "It's simply a random act of kindness to spread holiday cheer."

As a six-generation family-owned and operated business that was founded in Munich, Germany, 154 years ago, "our impact on the community is a core value for us," Coleman said.

He noted that in the past 15 months, the jeweler has raised some $130,000 for local schools, churches and synagogues. Representatives have offered free services at fundraisers including mini "Antique Roadshow"-type appraisals and lectures.

"We are trying to create a model by impacting the community and building good will."

He thinks it's working. Business is down an average of 25 to 39 percent in the jewelry industry, he said, but "at the close of the last fiscal year we were up 6 percent."

As for the Finders Keepers program, Coleman said, "We're going to make it an annual tradition."

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