welcome to "news4 this week. ". >> hi everyone i'm veronica johnson. we're going to show you some of the more interesting stories making news this week. among them after your money a string of new phone scams are targeting your wallet with some convincing threats. plus armed and unexpected how passengers are ending up at the airport security with deadly weapons and they don't even know it. and our health and fitness expo is here. the skill that you can learn that gave a virginia woman a second chance at life. >> so help me god. >> first, this week the district has a new mayor. muriel bowser took office.

she's been quick to get to work. four years ago she was arrested as a councilmember during a protest on capitol hill but this time the mayor says she's returned with a lot less tension to continue the push for voters' rights. news4's tom sherwood reports. >> reporter: that was then 2011, four years ago. this was now. democratic mayor muriel bowser being escorted to the halls of congress. her first full day on the job, bowser appeared with d.c. delegate eleanor holmes norton. with both houses of congress in republican hands, the democrats have their hands full. >> i want to recommit our efforts in the district for a new pathway towards statehood. >> reporter: bowser on sunday told a national audience on nbc's "meet the press" that the city for too long has been treated unfairly. >> to remind everybody that we are 660,000 tax-paying americans that go to war.

>> we are washington, d.c. >> reporter: appearing with police chief kathy lanier and the school counselor, bowser said the city wants its own statehood right, to be not retro ced ceded to maryland. >> we have not west hyattsville. we are in fact washington, d.c. >> reporter: bowser was quick to say that's no disrespect for hyattsville where she has many friends. in one key move bowser said she would set up her own capitol hill office rather than depend solely on norton. in the district tom sherwood news4. >> well the council seat left open by the late marion barry may stay in the family. barry's son, christopher barry, filed papers this week to fill his father's ward 8 seat. the 34-year-old owns a small painting company. now, he doesn't have any political experience but he said that he always wanted to carry on his father's work. one challenge may be some

trouble with the law. the younger barry has been arrested three times on drug and traffic charges. he's currently on probation. the special election coming up april 28th. well jurors are reacting to the two-year sentence handed down to former virginia governor bob mcdonnell. mcdonnell and members of his family thanked the judge publicly for giving him a much shorter sentence than he could have received. prosecutors asked for 10 to 12 years. mcdonnell's lawyers will still appeal his conviction. we spoke to one juror who felt community service would have been more appropriate, but another juror disagreed. >> i feel like i wasted six weeks of my time. i didn't even know who he was. i just moved to virginia so i went in not knowing anything about him. >> i want to thank the court and judge spencer for the mercy he dispensed to me today. >> you can see the full interview with that juror on nbcwashington.com and our nbc

washington app. there are some new laws that many of you will have to follow now that the new year is here. most notably in our region a minimum wage workers in maryland got a raise. the rate went from -- well it went up 75 cents to $8 an hour. the gas tax also went up. virginia drivers will pay 5 cents more per gallon and gas in maryland will be 3 cents more at the pump. drivers in virginia will have to visit the dmv more often. licenses for people 75 and older will expire now every five years instead of every eight. well a huge escalator replacement project is now under way in some of metro's longest escalators. six new escalators will be installed at woodley park metro station over the next three years. two of them will be shut down at any given time. the station's escalators are the third longest in the system and were originally installed in

1981. well here is a call that you don't want to receive. criminals are posing as government employees or a computer company and they're demanding that you pay your money. consumer reporter erika gonzalez reveals scam artists' latest tricks and how you can protect yourself. >> reporter: for julia hughes it started with a phone call. the same for michael sullivan. >> hello? >> reporter: and the same for jeannie winslow. phone scams, specifically ones using reloadable prepaid cards, are on the rise in fairfax city so much that police are putting out a warning, don't fall for these scams. >> most of the ones that we see are the green dot card scams. unfortunately for our ending for investigative purposes, those numbers on the cards are not traceable. >> reporter: in the last six months this police department has received nearly 70 fraud-related reports and over half of those are telephone scams. >> he was able to tell me the name of a judge, when my court

date would be. quite honestly i was blown away. >> reporter: julia hughes got a call from someone claiming to be a police officer saying she had missed jury duty and now there was a warrant for her arrest but she could settle it by saying $500 with a green dot money card. >> my stress level soared. my kids were worried that they weren't going to see me again. i was worried that i had done something, but i hadn't done anything. >> reporter: i met with 82-year-old michael sullivan as well. >> it scared me half to death. >> reporter: he tells me the person on the phone told him his grandson was badly beaten in a foreign country and he needed help. >> they wanted you to give them $2140 on a green dot money card? >> yes, ma'am. >> reporter: thankfully he checked with his loved ones before making the bogus transaction. >> when the guy said a grandson maybe it just hit a nerve. >> it pulled at your heart strings, talking about your grandson. >> that's what they were doing. >> at any point in time did you

say this sounds real? >> no. >> reporter: she and her neighbor got similar calls from windows. >> and we know that you have problems with your computer that you have viruses and other serious issues with your computer. we would like to take control of it so we can help you. >> reporter: scammers can be aggressive in tone and persistent. >> private caller 1259 october 9th. there's another one -- >> reporter: thankfully none of these individuals handed over money or personal information, but they were prudent enough to report it. >> we want to take the embarrassment away from that and encourage people to report it so we can get an accurate number. >> it seems to only be getting worse. we have ways to protect yourself from in fact a variety of scams. just head to nbcwashington.com and search scams. well they dot the ceilings of area schools. now the number of cameras watching students is growing. the news4 i-team investigation is next. plus preventing fence

jumpers. we get an update on possible changes at the white house.

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major changes could be coming soon to increase security outside the white house. news4 has learned that secret service is meeting privately with two government agencies that about raising the fence. we know a house committee is recommending the fence be raised four to five feet and horizontal bars be removed. the changes come after a man jumped just recently over the fence and ran into the white house. that was back in september. well there are a growing number of eyes on students and they likely have no idea. a review by news4's scott mcfarland reveals a fast-growing number of security cameras at local public schools. >> reporter: sometimes the cameras catch burglars in the act like they did days ago at

staun element stan elementary school. >> we're allowed to see a large area so we can cover a lot larger area than we could if we just had our security staff in the schools. >> reporter: quietly but quickly, d.c. area public schools have been deploying more surveillance cameras. news4 has reviewed security programs at eight local school districts and found combined those districts now use more than 30,000 security cameras. hundreds of them installed in just recent months. >> that card was not programmed to access that car. >> reporter: bob helmuth runs security at montgomery county public schools and allowed news4 inside where he can pull any of the 5,000 cameras onto his screen. >> we use this to go back and to reconstruct incidents that occurred. >> reporter: so detailed are the images he could check the hands of one high school staff member standing near a locker. the parents and people who live near school buildings question

whether all these cameras are overkill. >> i don't think it's necessarily going to be prevent things. we'd like to have people watching the cameras or being on the ground. >> reporter: inside his security hub room he says the cameras are too much for him and staff to screen continually. >> can any one person here regularly monitor them? >> no no it would be impossible. >> reporter: he says school security staffers in the buildings are a much more important security measure, and he says some of the kids know it. they realize there are too many cameras for staff to be watching and ignore the big eyes in the sky. this pair of students was positioned right next to a camera. >> i think people get used to it and forget those cameras are even there. and so -- and i think that's any building we go into any bank any mall. we know there's cameras there. we logically know there's cameras there but i don't think we think about it. >> reporter: government agencies have been handing out grant moneys to help pay for these cameras, in recent months in the wake of school shootings

nationwide. scott mcfarland news4. >> you can head to our website to learn more about how other school districts are using their cameras. nbcwashington.com and click on investigations. if you have a tip for the i-team, you can sending it to us right there at that same page. the transportation safety administration says more passengers are walking through airport security armed with weapons, and they don't even know it. so here's the problem. canes with daggers or swords hidden inside. security agents say that they have been confiscating the weapons on a daily basis. in fact it's become such an issue that the tsa is now advising anyone who uses a cane to try twisting the top just in case before going through security. >> i mean i think for the most part you say what's that. it's a lock. what's in it? it's a rock. what's in it? it's a cane. the question seems odd to begin with. >> in many cases passengers have

no idea that they have a concealed weapon but accident or no accident if you're caught with a cane like this at the airport, you could be arrested. well it's a life-saving skill and you can learn it this weekend at the nbc4 health and fitness expo. coming up next how cpr gave a virginia woman a new lease on life and apparently no one loves a snow day more than bow-bow.

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okay everybody, it's time. time for the nbc4 health and fitness expo which starts today. one of the free activities that you can take part in is cpr classes. as doreen gentzler reports, a virginia woman's story highlights why these classes are so valuable. kristen dominico died during a race but was brought back to life thanks to a stroke of luck.

>> reporter: the images are haunting. pictures as a man races to his car to get a portable defibrillator. it's for this woman, 47-year-old kristen d. dominico. she fell unconscious during a trail race in burke, virginia. >> i believe that somebody was watching out for me. >> reporter: kristen is an avid runner and has completed more than 100 races, including two ironman triathlons. she's a personal trainer, a nutritionist and life coach. without exaggeration health is her career and her passion. >> my heart is very strong. so there really wasn't that red flag to alert us that this was going to happen. >> reporter: kristen does have a heart defect. doctors told her it wasn't life-threatening and shouldn't stop her from running. but on october 19th while running a ten-mile race she says her heart suddenly stopped working and she collapsed just a few feet short of the finish line. >> so i died.

i had sudden cardiac death. and then the doctor who was running behind me brought me back to life. >> reporter: dr. raul tavar, a general surgeon with kaiser permanente was running behind kristen when he heard people shouting looking for a cell phone to call for help. then he saw her lying there on the ground. >> i realized that the bleedingreathing pattern is really bad. it's kind of what you do right before you die and then she stopped. >> reporter: dr. tavar couldn't find a pulse so he started cardiopulmonary resuscitation. >> the main goal of cpr is to just keep the blood circulating. keep the blood circulating to the brain. i could actually see in doing cpr on kristen, like when it was going, when i was doing the compressions she would start to move around a little bit. >> reporter: eventually the race director got there with the defibrillator, gave kristen a shock and her heart started working again. paramedics arrived and she made it to the hospital just in the

nick of time. >> in trauma we called it the golden hour. in this kind of thing it's the golden couple of minutes. >> oh my gosh. hi. >> reporter: nearly three months later, we were there as kristen met dr. tavar for the first time. >> i'm here. >> reporter: she said she has no words to describe her gratitude, and the importance of knowing cpr. >> i can't even describe really how it feels to be sitting here right now. >> quite the story. you can learn more about how to administer cpr at the nbc4 health and fitness expo. it is going on this weekend. doors open saturday at 9:00 a.m. at the washington convention center. like always, admission is free. well concern at the winter classic. why part of the opening ceremony had residents panicking.

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well for one day it had everyone in town everyone rocking the red. the winter classic gave d.c. an instant classic. but before it even started, people living near nats park took to social media to voice concern about the rumble of jets. ♪ home of the brave ♪ >> yeah but when you don't expect it residents say they weren't told about the flyover. some neighbors tweeted that their houses shook. others said their first thought was that the city was under attack. and on the flip side of everything a lot of folks at the game said it was one of the best national anthems and flyovers that they have ever seen. you can make sure to check out our coverage of the winter classic at nbcwashington.com. we've posted a photo gallery there of the fan experience and all the key plays and, of course we won.

i was out there too helping to report in our preshow and the weather as it turns out was just absolutely perfect. well you've probably seen this by now, but who doesn't want to see it again and again and again? it's the most popular video on our website and facebook page. giant panda bao bao rolling all around and playing in her first snow. she looks like a lot of kids do in our area sliding down the hill without having a worry in the world about staying warm. ah that was so cute. thanks for news4 this week i'm veronica johnson. thanks for joining us. we leave you with more images of the winter classic. until next time remember be safe be kind, be happy, everybody.

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it is a true winter weekend. cold all around. temperatures in the 20s. the windchill is even lower. we will see some sun today, but we're goin tel you why storm team 4 meteorologist chuck bell says it's not going to help. >> also this morning, tragedy near a local pond. what we're working to learn about a little boy's drowning. first, breaking news this morning. the tail portion of that airasia flight 8501 was recovered. the airbus a320 crashed two weeks ago and killed 162 people. at this point it is not known if that cobbingpit flight and voice data recorders, things known as