By Kristin Smith – September 1, 2015
SANDSTON, Va. (WRIC) — A Richmond man is on a mission to find his missing mail.

In April, photographer Steve Carr filled an envelope with negatives and shipped it off to a photo lab in California, but that envelope never made it to its destination.

As a result, Carr has spent the last four months sending hundreds of emails and making dozens of phone calls to anyone within the postal service who might be able to help.

“I probably have a book’s worth of emails that people looking for this single envelope and everything points back to Sandston,” explains Carr.

Sandston is the home of the USPS Processing and Distribution Center. Mail from our area goes through the plant before it ships out across the country.

Tracking information shows Carr’s envelope arrived at the facility the same day he mailed it and then departed just a few hours later.

He’s skeptical though and here’s why.

One of the people Carr contacted was Senator Mark Warner, who looked into the problem and sent back this report from the USPS Inspector General’s office.

It states that while searching for the missing negatives, agents “discovered several temporary untrained clerks intercepting damaged mail. The investigation revealed that a large portion of the damaged mail was likely not reaching the proper section for processing and repacking.”

But Carr wonders, “What does intercepted mean? Does that mean my mail piece was stolen? That it was thrown away? What has happened to it?”

8News contacted the US Postal Service but has yet to hear back from someone about what this all means for Carr.

Source: Search for missing mail reveals serious problems with Sandston postal facility | WRIC