ATLANTA — People are claiming missing mail has been an ongoing issue across east Atlanta.
Ryan Downey is the executive director of East Atlanta Kids Club at Brownwood Park. The nonprofit, which is publicly funded, provides after-school programs at no cost to families of at-youth risk across Atlanta. They serve upwards of 160-plus kids from across 44 different schools.
"My job is to raise about $800,000 this year," Downey explained, adding, "The money comes from government contracts, family foundations, corporate giving and individual donors."
A lot of the money is coming in the form of a check through the postal service.
"That's critical, that's our cash flow," Downey said.
However, he said they've not been receiving their mail consistently; in fact, he said some checks never made it to his desk.
Downey said he's done about everything possible to try and rectify the issue with the postal service in east Atlanta.
"We've attempted different things, P.O. boxes, holds, forwarding the mail," he explained.
Downey said nothing has solved the problem. He said they've still missed checks. He said just the ones they've been notified about total about $62,000.
"$62,000 is about six to seven weeks worth of our operation expenses here," he explained.
Downey said he knows he's not alone.
"Folks have talked about checks, gift cards, birthday cards, just anything that looks like it has money seems to be the common denominator," Downey said.
Less than a mile away from Downey's nonprofit, Lindsay Holloway said she started noticing something was up with her mail when a gift card sent by the company she works for never made it into her hands.
"I followed up and said, 'Hey, I haven't received this' and they said actually we show you did receive and you activated it on this day, which I had not done," Holloway explained.
Most recently, Holloway said she celebrated her birthday and many of her friends reached out asking if she'd received their cards they sent her for her birthday.
"I never received the cards and I've lived here almost 10 years and I've never had an issue," she said.
Now, Holloway just hopes whatever is going on with the postal service will be fixed, and soon.
"I don't know when it's occurring but something is definitely going on," she said.
11Alive reached out to United States Postal Service Inspection and United States Postal Service, but they have not yet responded. We also contacted Atlanta Police Department, but they said they do not take reports for mail theft.