Post Office Gives C.O.D. New Meaning

It happens every day. Someone puts an envelope full of family photos or a stack of savings bonds in the mail without an address. Or they forget to seal the envelope and its contents fly out into the postal nether world.

Gone, you might think. But Valerie Blackholly of Lake Forest wants you to think otherwise.

Blackholly inadvertently placed a blank, unsealed envelope containing a few thousand dollars’ worth of endorsed checks and $400 in cash in her mailbox along with a stack of bills on Monday. She hadn’t even realized that her money was gone when the post office called her the next day to return some of it.

When the first check turned up at the post office’s consumer affairs and claims department in Santa Ana, clerk Lorraine Vega went to work tracking down its rightful owner. Blackholly said she never thought it would all be recovered.

But all week the checks and cash--$400 in $20 bills--made their way to the claims office. By Friday, all 17 checks and every bit of cash had been turned in by postal workers.

“I’m in total shock,” Blackholly said. “I just want to commend and applaud the Santa Ana post room. . . . They need to be thanked.”

Postal officials said they are grateful for the praise but that lost money and possessions are returned all the time. In fact, they just wish more people would bother tracking them down.

Carol Samaniego, manager of consumer affairs and claims for Orange County, has a bulging folder of unclaimed photographs that have popped loose from envelopes--glamorous graduation pictures, old wedding photos, piles of cute baby snapshots.

If the proud auntie of Miguel Angel Magana III wants to give Samaniego a call, she’ll find an adorable little portrait for her at the post office.

Samaniego also has a box of keys. “People have a tendency to put them in envelopes without padding, and they break right out,” she said.

The Postal Service’s consumer affairs and claims office for Orange County can be reached at (714) 662-6215.