Go Ahead, Make My Day Planner

The setup: As you’re stopped at a traffic light, a knife-wielding carjacker smashes your passenger-side window. You reach across the seat, you grab your . . . black leather organizer.

The Anytimer Executive Organizer, with its zippered gun compartment, won’t be found among the Filofaxes at your local stationer. It’s available only by direct mail from the inventor, a retired law enforcement officer from Wisconsin who now owns a private detective agency in Scottsdale, Ariz.

It was those 120-degree Arizona summers that got Daniel Tschudy to thinking: Where does one conceal a weapon while in shirt sleeves or--as many gun-toters are females--while wearing a sleeveless dress and carrying a fashionably small handbag? In late 1997, he took out a patent.

The Anytimer, so named because it is “available any time you’re in fear of your life or great bodily harm,” comes in two models, each a discreet 6 1/2 inches wide and 9 3/4 inches long. There’s the basic single-zipper model ($100), 2 inches thick, with room for a few credit cards, and the executive model ($155), which is 3 inches thick, accommodates a loose-leaf notebook or electronic organizer and has dual zippers.

“Unzip the bottom compartment,” says Tschudy, “and it exposes a weapon.”

In Los Angeles, private citizens may be issued permits to carry handguns if they show good cause, pass a background check, agree to be finger printed and photographed, and complete a course in firearm safety and proficiency.

“California is one of our better-selling states” for the Anytimer, Tschudy says.

The Anytimer comes with one of 14 foam inserts, sculpted to accommodate some 200 handgun models, both semiautomatics and revolvers. Additional inserts are $20 each; accessories include an $8 wrist strap, a $13 shoulder strap and an insert for the gun-shy who just want to carry their jewelry. Another insert accommodates a Taser gun.

“About 30% to 40% of our clientele are women,” Tschudy says, mentioning that an Arizona state employee “bought one for his wife for Valentine’s Day.”

As word gets around, Tschudy thinks the Anytimer could become a crime deterrent. Say that a robber sees someone at an ATM with a day planner, he says. “They don’t know whether there’s a gun in it, so they’re going to go on to the next ATM.”