Photo by Bryan Archbold
Photo: Carpinteria mail carrier Debbie Bacchilega believes people on the street are more a worry than something at work happening.

Last week’s tragedy at the Goleta postal processing plant has been heavy on many hearts in Carpinteria. Many people in the community have been greatly affected, those who know the victims or their families, those who want to help in some way and those who want to see something change out of this unfathomable disaster.

One thing that has not changed is the community responding and reaching out. With the Goleta plant re-opening last Friday, there has been an enormous outpour of services offered, from the Family Service Agency offering a 24-hour helpline to Jonny Wallis, the mayor of Goleta, calling for the community to stick together to make it through the awful “act of violence.”

Carpinteria postmaster Louise Cruz will be attending the funeral services and has sent clerks from the Carpinteria office to Santa Barbara to cover shifts and relieve other workers so they may attend as well.

“It’s just so sad,” expressed Phil Jackson, a local Carpinteria resident of 12 years. “I’m not scared, but I do look around first when I go the post office now. I don’t think the postal service can provide any more security than they already have. Nobody could have prevented what happened.”

“Why?” is the question most people are asking. Why did Jennifer Sanmarco come back to the Goleta plant after two years of living in New Mexico and after being on disability leave from the post office she once worked at, unleash her grudge on innocent people? What made her do what she did? It has raised many concerns about the security level within the postal service.

“There have always been security measures in place,” said postal inspector Renee Focht of the Los Angeles Division of the United States Postal Inspection Service. Focht has worked for the postal service for 27 years, 17 of them as a letter carrier in Riverside.

“The Postal Inspection service had no idea Sanmarco was a threat. In 2001 the postal service called the local police department because she was acting strangely and escorted out of the facility. In 2003 she actually received a disability retirement and moved to New Mexico.”

“We’re just all shocked,” said Lupe Trithara, who has lived in Carpinteria for 30 years. “It is concerning that someone would just snap like that, but I don’t think what happened will change the comfort level of our post office. It’s like family here.”

Liloi Tuitama agrees. As the supervisor and customer service manager at the Carpinteria post office and after working for the postal service for 30 years, he says the postal service “is a very safe place to work. We have background checks and safety meetings every week and there are managers and inspectors out every day watching over our carriers and customers.”

In Carpinteria it is often that the letter carriers know more about their customers than most realize.

“One carrier noticed newspapers piled up in an elderly customer’s yard and upon inspection found the lady collapsed in her house. After calling 911, the paramedics reported the lady had suffered a stroke and would have died if our carrier didn’t check up on her,” Tuitama said. “Carpinteria is a real ‘hometown,’ we get to know people and we watch out for each other.”

As the second largest company in the nation, the United States Postal Service has taken every possible measure for the safety and protection of its employees from establishing postal police to anti-violence training to the employee assistance program. There are laws already in effect that if someone harms a carrier in the course of their federal duties, it is a federal violation with a penalty of up to eight years. There is an established threat assessment team that monitors the crisis management plan for incidents of violence in the workplace. And in 1988, the USPS established a “violence free workplace” in Public Notice 45 and strongly maintains a zero tolerance for any act of violence in the workplace.

The slang term “going postal,” stemmed from the killings within the USPS during the 1980s, has reached the dictionary, but has spread to mean a personality imbalance and an act of violence in general.

Debbie Bacchilega, of Carpinteria and a USPS letter carrier for 18 years says, “We have more to worry about people on the street than something at work happening. It’s just a shock knowing something like this hit so close to home.”