Mailbox medicine delivered to wrong house, twice

ST. PETERS – Shelia Van Drew doesn’t subscribe to magazines and she doesn’t expect birthday cards to come on time.

The St. Peters woman says she accepted years ago that her mail delivery is unreliable. But a recent delivery got her angry enough to contact Five on Your Side’s Mike Rush.

The package looked familiar because a similar package, for the same man down the road, was incorrectly delivered to Van Drew a few weeks ago. What really makes her mad is the fact that she’s already complained to the post office when it happened before. And then there’s the serious matter of what’s inside.

You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to recognize the sound of pills shaking in a bottle.

“I was really shocked,” Van Drew said.

When it happened the first time a few weeks back, she marched right to the post office to report the mistake.

“I thought that I had gotten my point across that this was very upsetting to me,” she said.

The pills delivered to the wrong hands, she believes, can be a prescription for disaster.

“Dangerous to a young person, a child. I mean lots of children who are younger than 12 home and get the mail,” Van Drew said.

The retired teacher is also concerned about the intended recipient.

Luckily, Navy Veteran Martin Ware, who lives on the same street, did not need the medication right away.

“Now, if I was in worse shape and my life depended on that medication, it’d be another story,” Ware said.

Pills popping up in Van Drew’s mailbox is the tip of the iceberg. She says misplaced mail has been popping up in the mailbox for years. It occurred so much she started keeping a record of it.

She has a stack of pink slips from prior years, verifying extra attention was paid to sorting her mail after she says she’d complained, as well as pictures of other incorrectly delivered mail her husband took as evidence.

A post office spokesperson says she could not find a record of Van Drew’s recent visit regarding the medication, but after NewsChannel 5 connected the two, the neighbors are planning to meet with the post master. Although Van Drew is not getting her hopes up.

She says she’s met with the post master before with no results.

If you have a reoccurring problem with incorrectly delivered mail, the spokesperson says instead of placing it back in your box, go to the post office and ask to speak with the post master or the manager to get the complaint on the record.

Filed under: General Problems