The Staten Island mom is obsessed with collecting change she finds on the street and blogging about it — and it’s paying off.

With the help of her husband, an Army sergeant, and their two daughters, Humphrey has saved more than $1,000 in three years.

“We find it everywhere,” said Humphrey, who started keeping track of her small-change scores three years ago while waiting for a college class to start.

“I saw a nickel and two pennies on the ground,” she said.

Deborah Chusid, 46, lost her advertising job on Sept. 26, another New York casualty of the economic downturn.

If that wasn’t bad enough, when she phoned her ex to ask him to put their 14-year-old son, Jonah, on his health plan, there was another blow. He had lost his job the same day.

Now what?

. . .

Why not put the dog to work? Surely everyone would think Louie — a friendly black-and-white Mi-Ki named after Louis Armstrong — is as adorable as she and Jonah do.

. . .

Like people showbiz, it’s a dog-eat-dog world for animals trying to break in. [Linda Hanrahan, the president of Advertising for Animals and owner of the now departed Toonces the Cat of “Saturday Night Live” fame] advised that Louie not get his hind legs up too high, as the reality is often disappointing.

“Attention customers,” the sign reads. “An energy surcharge of 1.8 percent will be added to every purchase.”

Look down at the receipt and sure enough, there it is, right below the totaled items: another add-on that yanks the price of an $8.99 pound of fresh figs to $9.15.

. . .

[Eli] Zabar, whose greenness quotient is such that he uses the excess heat from his bakery a few blocks away to warm his rooftop greenhouses, said that joking was the last thing on his mind.

“I could have easily just raised prices in the store — which we do all the time anyway,” he said.

Manhattan-based company STFree Certifications provides its health-conscious customers a sexual history “license” with a phone number on the back that enables them to prove their testing backgrounds to potential partners.

More than 15,000 people nationwide have signed up for the STFree service, launched in 2004 by Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, native Eli Dancy.

Dancy, a former club promoter, said he saw “a lot of irresponsibility” in his neighborhood and created the STFree card to help raise awareness.

“In places like where I grew up and where I worked, there are incredibly high HIV and STD rates,” said Dancy, 28. “This card opens up the conversation for people to talk about it.”

. . .

At registration, which can be completed online or inside an STFree van that travels citywide, program subscribers must provide a detailed sexual profile and be tested.

To access the testing history of an STFree cardholder, partners must have access to the phone number located on the back of the card as well as to a PIN number provided only to the STFree member.

“This card will keep people from lying and get it all out in the open,” said Bronx beautician Lorna Smith, 51, who lives in the borough with the highest AIDS death toll citywide.

“It will let you know who’s safe, and who’s not. It’s definitely a good idea,” said fireproofer Eric Lopez, 28, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Same with the Barbie doll and the Louis Vuitton handbag.

In raids in the metropolitan area yesterday, federal agents arrested at least eight people and charged them with heading a counterfeit products ring. Authorities say the ring has been smuggling into the country and then distributing massive quantities of fake brand-name goods manufactured in China, including Apple iPods, Major League Baseball and National Football League caps and Marvel comic books.

The counterfeits, which included millions of the phony Trojans, were sold for the past three years mainly in small discount stores in the area, as well as elsewhere in the country, including Texas and Virginia, according to court documents.

A spokeswoman for Church and Dwight, the company that manufactures the legitimate Trojan condoms in the United States, declined to comment on whether the counterfeit Chinese condoms could fail to prevent pregnancies or the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

But a source familiar with the federal investigation said that while the counterfeit condoms were of inferior quality, samples had been tested and they were no riskier to use than legitimate ones.