The Town of Star Valley Ranch spent a good chunk of June trying to solve the problem of what do you do when nobody can get their Amazon packages. But as the town headed into the holiday weekend, Mayor Ru Rok and other town employees were grateful to be nearly back to normal. 

“It’s been kind of a stressful couple of weeks here at Star Valley Ranch, Rok told SVI. “Our post offices in Star Valley have a huge problem with Amazon packages and they can get overwhelmed.” 

For this particular crisis, Rok and the town were notified by their contracted mail carrier that issues were coming. 

“They bring it from the Thayne Post Office,” she explained. “We share a zip code with Thayne so we don’t have our own zip code. That’s how the arrangement has been set up for the past 18 years.”

According to Rok, a decision maker in Denver determined this contract was not correct and told Thayne that the 923 residents of Star Valley Ranch who receive their mail through the SVR mail center would no longer get them as they have for almost the past two decades.  

“They determined that we should be a drop-off contract and not have a person put the mail in the boxes,” Rok continued. “They literally cut the funding to our mail carrier’s position last Saturday. We were trying to determine if the town was going to have to pick up that responsibility.”

The two then reached out to Wyoming State Senator Dan Dockstader who represents  District 16 where SVR is located. They also reached out to U.S Senator Cynthia Lummis to try and get some help. 

“We reached out to our elected officials and wanted some answers and were also trying to keep our residents informed,” Rok said. “This time of year we get a lot of people returning and the package numbers go up exponentially. I had no choice but to close our mail center and that’s where we were at. Then the log jam broke on Tuesday afternoon. This was because of Senator Lummis’ intervention and we received a lot of phone calls from the Denver office that a decision had been made improperly and they were going to rectify that starting next week so it’s been quite a roller coaster ride.”

Even with the unclear path and 22 pallets of packages piled up where they didn’t belong, Rok noted that the SVR mail carrier went the extra mile.   

“Our mail carrier lives at Star Valley Ranch and after this happened she called and told me she was going to keep delivering to the best of her ability,” Rok continued. “She started bringing the mail in on Sunday and on Monday there were 22 pallets of Amazon packages. They were putting the letters in the boxes but the packages were just stacking up from floor to ceiling. We came up with a plan with her help to have town staff and other volunteer residents to set up some package delivery times. By Monday we think we Weill be caught up enough to get back to things like they used to be. She really went above and beyond.”

Rok also empathized with the Thayne Post Office staff as well. 

“I felt awful for them too,” she said. “They were just doing what they were told to do and there were decisions being made in Denver that had no idea what chaos what they were going to cause in our little town. We got through it and I was very grateful for the help of Senator Dockstader and Senator Lummis. We are working to trying to make sure this never happens again.”

Rok was grateful to be able to finish prepping for the Fourth of July celebration and the America 250 milestone. 

“We [were] really glad to have it behind us with such a wonderful day coming up and it [was] nice to not have this hanging over us,” she concluded. “There are a lot of people who have helped us get this resolved. Our residents were very patient.”