NEIGHBORS : No Recoiling : Gloria Kahn wasn’t scared when she won a photo opportunity with a 200-pound python.

One person’s moment of glory can be someone else’s moment of dread.

Take, for instance, Camarillo Springs resident Gloria Kahn’s most recent moment in the spotlight. It’s not everyone who would have accepted it graciously.

As a volunteer at the Los Angeles Zoo, Kahn attended the zoo’s annual fund-raiser and, while, there won a raffle. Her prize? To have her picture taken with a 200-pound female python named Baby.

“I only held her head,” Kahn said. “I wouldn’t have done it without the head keeper there with me. He knew what to do and he told me what to do.”

Kahn said she wasn’t scared and noted that the python “was well-fed, so she wasn’t interested in me.”

Kahn has worked at the zoo for 22 years as a docent. For the last seven years, she has assisted with behavioral research on the zoo’s 12 gorillas.

Believe it or not, this was not Kahn’s first encounter with a sizable snake. First there was that boa constrictor she met on a zoomobile back in 1970. Then there was that other boa she was introduced to in the Amazon jungle in 1977. And then she got to play with a python while sightseeing in India in 1978.

“When you’re in a tourist group, they think they’re being funny having a snake charmer come along and ask if anyone wants to dance with a snake,” she said, recalling the python encounter in India. “Naturally I volunteered. I like to see the shocked looks on people’s faces.”

How serious has sports card collecting become in recent years?

Check out this announcement in the latest newsletter of the Friends of the Thousand Oaks Library. The subject is a card and comic book exchange for children under 16 later this month.

“Trading only--no cash sales. Please do not bring extremely valuable, difficult-to-replace cards. Label all notebooks and containers. It is recommended that you and a ‘buddy’ work in pairs.”

It’s a tough business, folks.

Speaking of the high-stakes world of sports card collecting: Westlake’s Scott Schwartz went into the Heroes & Legends sports card store in Agoura Hills late last month, purchased a box of Action Packed football cards for about $50 and found a card worth $75.

But it was no big deal to him. A mere pittance. That’s because several weeks earlier, Schwartz walked into a card shop in New Jersey and won a promotion by the same card company. That one entitled him to a replica of a card of Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham--a replica made from a pound of gold, valued at more than $5,000.

The 23-year-old Schwartz, who with his father owns the Baseball Cards & Movie Collectibles store in Westlake, figures that he was due to win something big.

“I’ve handled about 25,000 packs and I’ve never gotten anything,” he said.

Schwartz said he plans to hold on to the gold replica rather than deal it. Besides, he said, “the collector value is not so great. It’s not really the price of the card; it’s the price of the gold.”

Footnote: Schwartz was a child actor, having co-starred in “The Toy” with Richard Pryor and Jackie Gleason, and “A Christmas Story” with Peter Billingsley and Darren McGavin. With that in mind, the Action Packed company is looking for an appropriate way to deliver his reward. One previous winner, a Colorado resident, got his in a mine shaft via pack mule.