NYC’s Letter Carriers to Watch Out for Their Elderly Customers

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New York, NY — When mail and newspapers build up at an elderly person’s home, it can be a sign that something is wrong.

Now, the city’s seniors can sign up to have letter carriers keep an extra eye on their mailboxes, and if the bills and magazines are accumulating, emergency contacts are notified so that someone can check on them.

The Carrier Alert program was created decades ago in New York and many other cities nationwide but fizzled out over the years. In some areas, it has experienced a recent resurgence, and now New York is rejoining the initiative, linking it with the city’s 311 telephone information hot line so that carriers have one central place to call.

More in the Extended Article.

“Let us hope they never find anything, but if there is somebody in need, one phone call could save a life,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday.

The National Association of Letter Carriers said there have been hundreds of cases nationwide of homebound people being saved because their letter carriers noticed something amiss.

Among them:

An elderly Mississippi woman was stranded for four days after falling down in her backyard. Her postal carrier alerted a neighbor that her mail had been piling up, and the neighbor contacted police. She was rescued.

A California man lay dehydrated and dazed on his floor in the middle of a heat wave. He was saved after his letter carrier noticed he had not picked up his mail, closed a garage door or turned off his stereo.

In New York, elderly residents can call 311 to start the signup process.

Once people are on the list, they get orange stickers to put inside their mailboxes, alerting letter carriers that they are participants in the program — but they must remember to cover the stickers when going out of town.

The U.S. Postal Service is beginning a training program so its New York workers know about the initiative and can recognize the stickers.

”For seniors who feel isolated, or if they’re homebound, our letter carriers are sometimes the only point of contact they have with the outside world,” said Robert Durek, USPS New York district manager and postmaster. “Our carriers are on the street six days a week and often provide the extra eyes and ears while they are delivering mail.”