Veteran ‘mail lady’ looks out for people on her route

Karen Hebert with her husband, Bobby, at the dog park

“I’m a mail lady. I took the civil service exam and then three years later they called me and I’m like, oh, I forgot I even did that. When I went for the interview the guy said, ‘Well, you walked into a job because nobody else showed up.’ I’ve been doing it for 30 years now.”

Any interesting stories from delivering the mail?
“A lady on my route gets packages almost every day. Recently when I came down her road, I wondered why her garage door was open. Even when she’s home, her garage door is shut. I didn’t have her phone number, but I knew where she worked. So I called her at work and said, ‘Hey, your garage door is open. That’s not normal.’ She said she would ask her neighbor to shut it and thanked me for calling.

“The next day I stopped to talk to her and learned that she had been robbed blind. They helped themselves to a room full of packages, her computer, her gun … They walked out of there with garbage bags full of things. I just knew something was wrong. I only wish I could have done more for her.”

— Karen Hebert