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Neighborhood outraged over mailbox keys

Posted at 7:03 PM, Oct 19, 2015
and last updated 2015-10-19 22:03:02-04
After waiting for hours, angry post office customers called You Ask. We Investigate.
 
Many of them have made multiple visits and waited hours to get medication and other important mail. 
 
Dozens of people stood in line to get new mail box keys and pick up mail Monday morning at the Tenaya and Smoke Ranch post office.
 
People told Action News it was even longer before some people threw in the towel and left.
 
"I've been here since quarter to nine this morning," said Dee Dee Tillet, when we spoke with her around 11:30 a.m. as she waited to pick up her mail. "This is trip number three in the last week."
 
The mail boxes in Dee Dee Tillet's community, Mariposa Apartments, were taken out. She said she was told she would have to come to the post office on Tenaya get her mail for the next four weeks.
 
Hoping to avoid that, Beverly Dietderich had her mail forwarded to her daughter. But her daughter's mailboxes were taken out, too!
 
"I'm out of medication today," said Dietderich. "It should have been here on the eighth day of October."
 
Now she will have to stand and wait or go back to the doctor and hope they can give her a refill. 
 
"I think we need to hire more help," Dietderich said. "This shouldn't happen. It's kind of bad. There's a lot of people in the line with health problems that need their meds." 
 
The United States Postal Service says the Mariposa apartment complex is replacing their boxes, which serve 250 USPS customers 
 
At the same time, USPS is replacing 665 old boxes with new high-security boxes.
 
That is part of a campaign to improve security in areas hit with more mailbox thefts. So far, 500 boxes have been replaced and they plan to replaced 1,000 more. 
 
Action News asked USPS if they could split the people up, instead of sending them all to the same location and causing long lines and lengthy waits.
 
They said it would be too inconvenient to send people to different post offices.