Not long after being replaced late last year, the USPS collection box at the corner of SE 76th and Salmon Street went missing again. First removed after vandals damaged the unit on November 30th, postal crews installed a replacement box within a week. However, by December 23rd, the new collection box again went missing from the sidewalk. Yesterday the blue icon returned to its previous position on the corner.

An unauthorized attempt to open the collection box caused the first removal. Ernie Swanson, Strategic Communications Specialist for USPS, detailed the vandalism. “The lock on the box was damaged to the point that the box could not be opened.” 

Repeated inquiries regarding the second removal went unanswered. Comments about this matter from a United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) representative expressed that “to protect the integrity of investigations [USPIS does] not provide details of the existence or progress of ongoing investigations.”

With the Postal collection box now returned, residents no longer need to walk to SE Stark Street and 80th, where the next closest collection box resides. With luck, the collection box will now remain at this location uninterrupted.