March 1 to 3 Vashon mail was lost. For five weeks, I made repeated inquires to the local post office staff and the behemoth bureaucracy of the USPS, which were either unable or unwilling to provide an update on their search or promise anything. It’s still missing! I mailed a certified letter to my daughter on March 3, that if stolen, could easily lead to identify theft. Yet the USPS website record lists this letter is still at the sorting building in Seattle. Was it shredded? Lost? Stolen? Please tell me.

But this is a bigger issue than my story. The U.S. Postal Service must change how they communicate with Vashon customers and the press!

I’ve heard many stories from friends who sent items that were never delivered have now resent their mail or reissued lost payments. We know the process would have been eased had the Vashon post office been able to communicate with customers from the beginning.

Vashon’s postmaster, who was gone when the problem was first discovered, said the post office’s hands were tied, as communication with customers about such an issue must come through USPS’s Office of Public Affairs. Another USPS official said mail doesn’t go missing often, so they don’t have procedures in place when it does. Yet not having procedures for communication doesn’t excuse this lack of communication.

Why couldn’t the Office of Public Affairs have authorized local postal employees to post a notice in the post office, put fliers in mailboxes and announced this story and their plan on how to solve it to The Beachcomber? The longer that this issue is unresolved, the more chance that a thief has broken into my daughter’s bank accounts, employment checks or health records. And our Vashon community still doesn’t know what happened to their mail those days.

It’s past time for USPS to tell us what happened.

— Amy Huggins