Mailman’s Delivery Still Letter-Perfect

Johnny Moreno never wastes a step. He travels his postal route at a pace that would leave many younger people winded and wheezing. Up, up, up he goes--never pausing as he climbs high into the foothills of Santa Paula, a rural town of citrus farms and rambling homes.

“On to the next block,” he says, slinging his 35-pound mailbag over his shoulder and speeding off. But come Monday and after 41 years, the 583 customers along mail Route 4 won’t have him dropping by each day.

“I didn’t know that,” 90-year-old Selma Strange said when told her mailman was retiring. “He’s very special. When I go away I leave him a note to hold my mail and he always does. Johnny’s my friend. Who will replace him?”

So far no one has been selected.

The 59-year-old letter carrier has worked longer in the Santa Paula post office than anyone in its history, officials said. He’s been around so long he can sort mail by name rather than address. And he works the most physically demanding route in the office.

“It’s the ‘trial by fire route.’ I tell other carriers that as bad as it will get for them, it won’t get worse than Route 4,” said Richard Garcia, manager of customer service at the Santa Paula post office. “The next person who gets the route will have a legacy to fulfill.”

Santa Paula Postmaster Lena Arista called Moreno the “gold standard” by which other carriers are measured.

Such sentiments seem to embarrass the trim, quiet Moreno.

“It’s not baffling. You park and do the loop. You move the truck another block and do it again,” he said with a slight grin.

Route 4 starts on the valley floor of Santa Paula and slowly winds upward. Narrow side streets, thick with vegetation, hide homes and apartments. Mailboxes can sit atop steep inclines.

Decades spent along the route have made him familiar with residents.

“You can see when people start getting sick,” he said. “They stop coming out. The outgoing mail is in the box. You start getting the sympathy cards.”

Couples who are breaking are easily spotted. “When you get a forward for ‘Johnny’ but not ‘Susie’ that tells you something’s up,” he said knowingly.

A dog yapped ferociously from inside a small house. “That’s Sam,” he said. “I don’t make his day until he gets to bark at me.”

In 41 years he’s only been bitten once.

Born and raised in Santa Paula, Moreno was a star on the high school football team. He is married with three adult children and is a great-grandfather. He lives on his route and delivers his own mail.

When he started carrying mail, Santa Paula was a much smaller town, about 16,000 compared with today’s city of roughly 30,000.

In those days there were only two mail trucks. Carriers used their own cars. His salary began at a little over $2 an hour, rising to $21 an hour.

Over the years Moreno has done more than give clients their mail. He once found an elderly woman lying in her backyard with a broken elbow. He also alerted the Fire Department when he saw flames rising from a house on his route. In another incident, he grabbed a 2-year-old who was wandering on busy California 150.

He’s trained at least 50 letter carriers. One rookie attempting Moreno’s route ended up popping nitroglycerin pills to calm his heart spasms.

“People want this job because they think its a kick-back job where you just walk around all day,” Moreno said. “It’s stressful. You have to have a good memory, you have to be organized and you have to be physically capable of doing it.”