Who is that? she wondered. Is this some kind of a scam?
As she glanced around at her living space, which looked as if a storm had blown though and shaken everything lose—open drawers, scattered clothing with turned-out pockets, rifled-through bags and purses (including the trash)—a possibility spoke to her: could this mysterious caller somehow possess her lost check?
Haywood’s father had recently passed away. In addition to having to cope with his loss, she was also responsible for settling all of his outstanding accounts. A week before the voice message from Danny Hill, she had received the check from her father’s life insurance, had endorsed it, and then it disappeared.
Not herself at the time, she unknowingly placed the check on a pile of outgoing mail. No envelope, no stamp, no return address: just a signed check in the amount of $89,000.
She replayed the message, scribbled down the phone number, and returned Danny’s call.
“When she came and picked it up, the picture doesn’t justice to the moment. She was just about crying when she left,” said Claims & Inquiry Clerk Danny Hill.
“This is just one of the really fun things about my job,” he said. “I’m glad that I catch what I can and get it back to the customer, sometimes even before they know that it is missing.”
The encounter with Haywood touched Danny, too. “She had to care for her father before he died, and I have my elderly mother living with me. I’m having to deal with some of the same issues, so maybe I felt even more empathetic than usual.”
“At a time when revenue is down, it is critical that we don’t lose customers. More so now than ever before in our history. To me, that puts the best foot forward for the Postal Service: it takes somebody interacting with a personal touch,” Danny said.
“She will remember the rest of her life the time that the Post Office returned her $89,000 check.”
Read more about Danny’s experiences as a Claims & Inquiry Clerk in the next issue of Postmarks, who thanks Danny Hill, Lasabria Smith, and Viola Freeman for sharing this uplifting story and for providing the picture.
