There are two other centers, one in Atlanta and one in San Francisco. Altogether, the three facilities employ more than 200 clerks who are committed to keeping that old promise to deliver the mail, no matter what. After spending a day on the job with Vera, I can't imagine how anyone could be more committed than she is. Her shift begins at 7 a.m. in a windowless building that looks like the headquarters of a national association of pack rats.
Stuff is piled up everywhere.
She starts using her razor blade to slash open packages. It would be a federal crime for anyone other than a mail-recovery clerk to do this. The ring had been stolen 12 years earlier, Nissalke told Vera when she tracked him down in Salt Lake City. Last year, the Postal Service processed 200 billion pieces of mail. Of those, nearly 100 million ended up at a Mail Recovery Center, including 98 million letters and 1.2 million packages that contained computers, camcorders, stereos, x-rays, needlepoint pillows and cuckoo clocks.