President of the National Association of Post Masters Comments on Royal Case

By Ron Fitzwater

Drew Martin, President of the North Carolina chapter of the National Association of Post Masters pointed out

in a recent phone call that mail carrier doesn't always mean Mail Carrier, in response to Ashe Mountain Times coverage of accused mail embezzler Sandra Royal.

In last week's Ashe Mountain Times it was reported that a mail carrier from Wilkes County had embezzled several pieces of mail in the performance of her duties for the postal service.

It was brought to our attention by Martin that he and others at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) felt some of the terminology used in the article was misleading and could cause some people to lose their trust in the USPS and its dedicated employees.

We have offered Martin an opportunity to respond.

"I noticed some factual errors and I think the biggest issue for postal employees across the community is that people would get the impression that this woman [Sandra Royal] was a postal employee and that she was a postal carrier as well.

"She [Royal] was referred to as 'rural-route mail carrier,' and Mail Carrier is actually a title. Technically, you could say that 'rural-route mail carrier' was not 100 percent inaccurate, but the fact is that she is not a mail carrier. She was a substitute contract driver, not someone who delivered mail.

"Postal workers and Post Masters are very conscious of their image in the community and work very hard to maintain that image. This person was not a Postal employee and she was not a rural carrier," Martin said.

Martin explained that he was not trying to "disparage contract drivers or substitute contract drivers but the impression is that she was one of us and she was not one of us; She was a contract employee.

"Postal Carriers are people of very high integrity because they have to be. The public entrusts very important information and documents with us, and the private mail statutes are protected by the laws of the country and by congress for a very good reason. This story illustrates that.

Martin said he could understand how people might have concerns about non-postal employees handling their mail and that Post Masters in general shared in that understanding.

"I am very sensitive to the fact that our customers expect, and have every right to expect, that we take good care to maintain the security of the mail," he said. "We can only do that by having good quality people working for the Postal Service."

Martin emphasized that he wanted postal customers to understand that Royal was not employed by the Postal Service and that he truly believes that the Postal employees and the rural carriers who work for them are of high integrity and work hard to serve their communities in a professional manner.

"People don't always understand the subtleties in these terms because, let's face it, the Postal Service is unique and a difference to us of the term delivering mail and transporting mail is a different impression than the reality. She didn't deliver mail, she drove mail from one point to another, which is a completely different thing," he said.

47 year-old Sandra W. Royal was arrested and charged with multiple counts of embezzlement of mail and was scheduled to appear in court to answer the charges June 30th. Details of Royal's appearance were not available at press time.