No one should have to hear their father cry.

[Rochelle]

I'm definately still LOA after everything outlined in the LIA/LOA forum, but I need to vent a little.

I take it back. I'm not numb, not anymore.

We just got the box we mailed home from my grandfather's because it was too heavy to put on the plane, filled with old valuable books that were a major chunk of our inheritance (we're a big book loving family) and priceless memories of my grandparents and great grandparents.

At least, it was supposed to be full of those.

The box had been torn open and taped back together, with an official notice saying that it had been repackaged in Kansas City because of damages. It was filled with cheap paperback Nancy Drew books. Every item of any value had been stolen, including two original Sears and Roebucks catalogs from the fifties, three McGuffy's Readers dating from the 1890s and used by my great-great grandmother to teach school in rural Missouri along with pictures, a rare copy of a book written by my great grandfather, and an original printing run copy of the children's book the Teenie Weenies.

The last was one of the only things my father had asked for out of my grandparent's estate because of all the memories he had attached to it. I just finished listening to my mother tell him about the theft over the phone on one of his rare calls from Iraq, and heard him begging her to tell him that the Teenie Weenies were still in the box.

I could hear him crying over the phone when she told him that it was gone too.

Adding insult to injury, the only thing the postal service is going to reimburse us is the shipping, even though the sum total of some of the books in question reaches into the thousands.

On the incredibly weird chance that someone here knows anyone at the Kansas City mail sorting center, we're trying to get them to mount an investigation at the very least. We know we're not going to get them back at this point, but robbery like this is just unspeakable. My dad was already barely holding it together after my grandfather died and then he had to ship out a few days afterward, and now this.

It's been a few hours now since the call ended, and I can still hear him crying in the back of my mind.

I want to break something, specifically the neck of whoever did this. But I can't. I doubt we'll ever find out who did that, and even if we did I doubt they'd care that their actions caused my father to cry.

[Jane]

That's really awful for your dad.

But it might not be sinister.  If two boxes were sent to the damaged parcels department with books spilling out ...  Well, things could go astray.  Somebody's probably after their Nancy Drew books, too, especially if they're numbered in the high thirties.

Keep investigating!

[Paula]

That's just so terrible.

[Amanda N]

That is so heart wrenching!

[Ainsley]

Rochelle,

This is truly horrible!  I hope that your investigations prove productive for you!

[AprilHolland]

My Husband works for the post office here in waukesha and he suggested you take it to the news. Then they would have to be forced to look into it. A while back they had a problem with peoples w2 forms disappearing and someone took it to the news and it got looked into. There aren't a lot of people that could have gotten to that box to do that. I've had problems with my mail person too. We live in an apartment complex and the postal person would leave or stuff by our door and not knock. We have lost about $100 dollors in stuff. I made a big stink so they aren't allowed to do that. All i got back was about 5 dollars in stamps. Was the box insured?

[Rochelle]

Thanks for the suggestion April, but we've got a bit of an issue with taking it to the news -we're in Florida and this happened in Missouri. And the Missouri new station isn't particularly interested in picking up out of state grievances to use as stories. *sigh*

We did insure the box, BUT, something happened with their system and they can now find no record of the insurance payment, so they're claiming it wasn't insured. We've presented the receipt we had, but were told we would have to fly back to Missouri for them to be able to do anything. We're still arguing, but it's slow going and we've been flat out told that investigating probably won't help because a lot of the people working in the postal system are facing job cuts and are pretty indifferent to anyone's misery but their own and being fired sooner rather than later isn't gong to faze them much if they've already stolen their next few months rent worth of stuff.

Jane, we are keeping the possibility of an accidental switch up in mind and hoping someone will report the Nancy Drews missing, but from the way the box was torn up we think this was deliberate destruction at work and that the thief (or thieves if this is the case) was clued in on the value by the very fact it was insured.

The whole situation is just... ugh.

[Cali]

File a police report at your local department.  They can contact the Kansas City Missouri PD and investigate.  If the box cutting appears deliberate, it might be part of a larger operation.  Just don't throw anything away until they can take prints/photos.

[Kaysea]

Rochelle I am so sorry to hear of this happening so soon on the heels of your grandfathers passing.  I can only imagine the pain and heartache your father and your family are going through.  

I still think going to the news would shame the postal service into doing something.  Fingerprints on the box and books maybe?  Even mentioning the Nancy Drew books might draw someone out of the woodwork.  No one is going to have a cache of ND books, to replace your fathers books with, on hand - or I doubt it.  They would have had to have planned the whole thing carefully if that was the case.

Will keep your family in my thoughts.

*hugs*
Karen