Lafayette USPS Worker Goes Postal – And Probably Saves A Life

Tough times for the US Postal Service these days. All that snow and sleet. Financial problems. The scourge of email and all the rest. Forgotten in a lot of the negative headlines are that there are still lots of great people at work delivering our mail.

And yesterday, Monday, one of them really went to bat for one of her customers.

NEWS24-680 got wind of this story late Monday. We’ll let an impressed Lafayette Police Chief Eric Christensen tell the tale:

“So yesterday afternoon at 1600 (that’s 4 p.m. for us civilians) we received a call from a postal worker who was trying to deliver a piece of certified mail. The home is located in North Lafayette off of Reliez Valley Road. The home is in a rural area, off of the main road – so it is in an isolated location.  Bottom line, the home is not in ear-shot of anyone else.

“The postal worker had gone to the door of the home and had rung the doorbell. She heard a faint noise from within the home, but could not hear anyone within the home.   She rang a second time and heard something move in the home, but still heard no voices coming from inside. She rang a third time and this time, she put her ear up to the door – so she could hear better what was going on inside the home.

“When she did this, she could hear a woman’s voice faintly saying “Help“.  The postal worker went around the sides of the house to see if she could see anything going on within the home.  She telephoned police, advising of the situation and that she believed a woman in her 70’s was in trouble inside the home.

“Officers responded and also heard the woman calling out in need of help, forcing entry to the home. The elderly woman had lost consciousness sometime the night prior and had laid on the floor, unable to move for more than twelve hours. Fire and AMR (the ambulance guys) responded and the woman was transported to the hospital for evaluation.

“Scary to think about what might have happened had that postal worker not arrived, had the postal worker not been interested enough to investigate what the noise from within the house was, and what would have happened if they did not call to have someone check the home. Isolated person, isolated home, certainly could have turned out much differently.

“In our community, Our postal carriers do a lot more for us than just deliver the mail.  They are an extra set of eyes and ears within the community that often provide some help to us at the PD.  I am going to ask that we honor the postal carrier for her efforts.  I have her name, but I want to talk to the postal people before we release it.”

So there you have it. Can we get a hoo-rah for this dedicated – and very kind – worker? We’ll kick in for lunch! And run her name when she says we can…