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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Post office gives vet tough break

D.f. Oliveria spokesmanreview.com/blogs/hbo

Buddy Frazier has a beef against the U.S. Postal Service – a $1,000 beef. But first let me tell you something about Buddy. He’s a former Alaskan artist who was good enough to design Red Lantern trophies for the annual Iditarod dog race. Also, he’s a decorated Vietnam War veteran who suffers from Parkinson’s disease. His ailment prompted him recently to move here from Alaska to be nearer the veterans hospital. Onward. On July 7, he paid $50 for postage and $5,000 worth of insurance to mail a sculpture of his, an ivory eagle carrying a fish, from Ninilchik, Alaska, to Coeur d’Alene.

The family heirloom didn’t get here in one piece. A wing was broken. And, Buddy told Huckleberries, the box the piece arrived in looked like the one Jim Carrey kicked around in “Pet Detective.”

Worse yet, Buddy said he ran into a brick wall at the Coeur d’Alene post office when he tried to file a claim for $1,000 to fix the wing properly.

“I was treated like I’d sent it and then broken it on purpose,” Frazier said. However, Carol Bainerd,the bulk mail entry clerk, told Huckleberries her hands are tied until Frazier can provide proof that his work of art is worth what he said it is.

She said she could file the claim with the St. Louis office. But it’d be rejected without an independent cost estimate.

Meanwhile, the stress is getting to Frazier, who doesn’t handle stress well. Methinks the burden should be on the post office to prove why it shouldn’t pay a legit claim rather than on an ailing artist who has already suffered the partial loss of an irreplaceable piece of art.