News-Record.com

RALEIGH (MCT) — Steven Padgett was the type of mailman who made sure packages got left on dry porches.

He handed out treats to dogs he encountered on his Apex route, and children knew him as "Mailman Steve." He once leapt out of his mail truck to shoo away a snake that startled two women.

Today, the good will Padgett built up over the years could help him as he stands before a federal judge.

Padgett, 58, violated a cardinal rule of his profession by holding on to the very mail he was supposed to deliver. Today, he'll find out what his punishment will be for delaying and destroying mail, a crime that could mean five years in prison.

Some residents whose mail went missing have spoken up for Padgett and think he has already been punished enough by losing his job — and the shame.

"I don't think he was being malicious," said Shelley Cole, a resident of Apex's Jamison Park subdivision. "We got all the mail that we needed to get."

This spring, postal inspectors discovered years worth of junk mail piled in the garage of Padgett's Raleigh home and buried in his yard. All were third-class pieces of mail, including direct mailings and circulars that advertisers use to offer up deals on pizzas, windows and oil changes. Padgett pleaded guilty in August.

The U.S. Postal Service never received a complaint about the missing mail and didn't know anything was amiss until they were contacted by a utility worker who went to Padgett's house in May and noticed the excess mail. Postal authorities don't think any letters, bills or other type of first-class or second-class mail were among the hundreds of thousands of fliers at Padgett's home, some dating back as far as 1999.

It wasn't a conscious stand against waste or a junk mail protest that spurred Padgett to hold onto the mailers, according to Andrew McCoppin, his attorney. Rather, it was the inability to meet the demands of a job in a growing part of the county while contending with heart problems and complications from his diabetes, McCoppin wrote in a memo in advance of the hearing. Not sorting and delivering the third-class mailings became a way to save time and make sure other mail got delivered on time.

"In a misdirected effort to continue the illusion of the perfect mailman, he covered up his failure in a manner which probably seemed, at the time, to cause the least harm," he wrote.

Expressions of mercy

Many along Padgett's former route off of Ten-Ten Road expressed disbelief at Padgett's crime and said they hoped he would not be punished further.

He was such an attentive mailman that some, such as Cole and her husband, David, didn't quite know what to make of him at first. The couple moved to their home in Jamison Park in 2006 from California, where they never recalled even meeting their mail carrier.

"Steve epitomized everything we thought living in North Carolina would be," David Cole said. "Here, the guy knocks on your door to welcome you to the neighborhood, asks you about your kids and your dog.

"I felt like I turned the clock back 35 years," he said.

The same went for Debbie Maness, another Jamison Park resident, who had encountered the snake that Padgett moved for her.

"That endeared him to me," Maness said.

Padgett had spent most of his career in the delivery business. Before going to work as a mailman in 1995, he spent 17 years working for UPS. He was a Vietnam veteran who spent time in combat with the U.S. Marine Corps, contracting malaria while overseas. He lives in Raleigh and is a father of three grown women, a grandfather to three and has been married to his wife for more than 33 years.

Losing his job and the personal humiliation has been more than enough punishment, said David Cole, who also pays to use the direct mailings to advertise for his financial advice business.

"In my eyes, the guy has paid enough," Cole said. "Even as a business owner, I don't want my pound of flesh."