INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Mary Beth Mauldin's priority cross-country mailing of a special Christmas gift to her mother in Winter Beach just arrived in pristine condition — 371 days late.
"I laughed," said Mary Lou Shelton, though her daughter still is a little miffed because the United States Postal Service didn't deliver it to her mother's post office box until Dec. 16, a year and six days later.
The box contained a flannel nightgown that Mauldin, 53, specially purchased last year because it contained images of cardinals, a family favorite. This nightgown, "with red birds on it, was really over the top," she said.
Now the delivery proves she really did mail a gift to her mother on Dec. 10, 2010.
But Mauldin is concerned the retail store gift card in it has expired. Ironically, a Christmas card Mauldin mailed on Friday from Arkansas arrived on Monday at Shelton's box office in Wabasso.
For a year, Mauldin has been angry with her post office in Greenbrier, Ark., because the small box vanished after she watched it being stamped and put in an out bin.
"I know people there" at the post office, she said.
Since then, she has been going 25 miles out of her way to Conway, Ark. to mail packages.
A year ago she used priority mail because the Postal Service advertised a special rate: $10 for mailing anything that fit the free box that is 10 inches by 8 inches. Because it was priority mail, she assumed it would get there without insurance.
Somehow it got shipped to postal limbo.
"I was furious. I didn't want to hurt my parents" by having them think I didn't send a Christmas gift, Mauldin said.
Then her mother called on Dec. 16 and told her of the late arrival. "I couldn't get anything out of my mouth," she said. "I was just shocked. Now I am not so sure it was Greenbrier's fault."
The box was addressed to the Winter Beach post office that closed Nov. 19 because of cutbacks, and Mauldin surmises that it may have been found during a cleanup.
But Shelton said postal workers told her that it just arrived and that the box was marked to indicate that.
When Shelton realized that the box was delivered a year late, she went back inside the post office and postal workers made a photocopy of it. "We were all laughing so hard."
Then she went home and opened it from the bottom so she could save the top with the postal markings on it.
"I had a feeling it would show up," Shelton said.
Winter Beach mail now is being handled by the Wabasso post office and the postmaster referred calls to the Postal Service's public relations department.
"We apologize," said Postal Service spokeswoman Enola Rice. "It is not the type of service we try to provide" in a holiday season when about 16.5 billion items are being delivered between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. "This is highly irregular. It shouldn't have happened." But now that the problem was found after delivery, "it would be very difficult to say what occurred," Rice said.
She said the mother and daughter can get a letter from the Postal Service's customer relations department to show that the package was delayed, causing the gift card to expire.
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