Sandra Lee Winkler

What is the postal service motto?

Actually, the U.S. Postal Service does not have an official motto. The phrase which most people associate with the postal office is that which is engraved on the outside of the James A. Farley Post Office building at 8th Avenue & 33rd Street in New York, New York: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

This phrase was a translation by Prof. George H. Palmer, Harvard University, from an ancient Greek work of Herodotus describing the Persian system of mounted postal carriers c. 500 B.C. The inscription was added to the building by William Mitchell Kendall of the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the building's architects.

I don't think mail carrier Sandra Lee Winkler cares about the swift completion of her appointed rounds.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A U.S. Postal Service carrier was delivering more than mail, according to a criminal complaint that charges her with providing her adult daughter with crack cocaine and smoking the drug herself in the back of a mail truck.

Sandra Lee Winkler, 51, of Milwaukee is charged with one count of delivery of a controlled substance, 1 gram or less of cocaine, as well as one count of possession of a cocaine.

According to the complaint, Milwaukee police and U.S. postal inspectors were following Winkler last week while she worked her route. They watched her park outside her home on S. 36th St. After Winkler went inside, another person drove up and went inside for several minutes, then drove away, the complaint says.

Winkler then left in her mail truck and was followed to the 1500 block of S. 38th St., where she met briefly with a woman and handed her something, according to the complaint. That woman then got into a car and drove away.

The woman in the car later was seen smoking as her 3-year-old child sat next to her, according to the complaint. When police stopped the car, they found crack cocaine and a crack pipe in her purse. She told officers she had just gotten the crack from Winkler, her mother, the complaint says.

Meanwhile, Winkler stopped near the 3800 block of W. Mitchell St. and got into the back of the truck shortly before a postal inspector opened the rear door and found her smoking crack, according to the complaint.

Winkler told police that she had been using the drug daily for a couple of years and used the back of the mail truck for privacy, the complaint says.

Winkler has been employed by the Postal Service eight years and will remain on leave without pay pending the criminal case, said Breck Nolin, the deputy special agent in charge of the service's inspector general's office in Illinois.

There is so much wrong with this picture.

Sandra Lee Winkler admits to smoking crack on the job. The back of a U.S. mail truck provided her with privacy.

She was delivering crack while on the job.

She delivered crack to her daughter. Like mother, like daughter, I suppose. Oh, those family traditions!

Winkler's daughter was smoking crack with her 3-year-old, Winkler's grandchild, sitting next to her.

The 3-year-old is the real victim here. Grandma delivered crack to mom. They're not good role models for the child. The 3-year-old is not being raised in a good environment.

What a dysfunctional mess!


And the people on Winkler's postal delivery route, they're victims, too. I can't believe that Winkler was a responsible, dependable mail carrier.