A Federal Employee Helping Others With Her Own Money

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Bancroft, WV, is a small community of 375 residents, and although many customers do their postal business online at usps.com, Officer-in-Charge Masel Brown says several customers come in to the Post Office every day.

"I have an elderly customer who visits me often," said Brown. "One morning she came into the office rather distraught and told me she had mistakenly written a check for $697, leaving her with a mere $25 to survive on for the month."

Neighbors bring her lunch, says Brown, but the customer doesn’t have any close-by family members to help her. "So I wrote her a check for $650.

"When I gave her the check, she cried," Brown said.

But the generosity didn’t stop there. Another customer overheard the conversation and went out and bought the woman $500 in groceries. "I was shocked that this woman would buy groceries for someone she had just met," she said.

"My daughter told me I was trying to buy my way into heaven," she said with a laugh. "I’d say there’s a lot of that going around in this little town."
 

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