COSTA MESA : Critic Delivers His Protest to Post Office

Clad in army fatigues with sandwich boards hanging from his shoulders, a former letter carrier from a small town in Montana stopped at the Costa Mesa main post office Tuesday during a one-man tour across the country to protest what he said is “the mismanagement in the post office system.”

Since Feb. 26, Rick A. Kuchynka of Miles City, Mont., has been driving his 1988 Buick to various post offices. He said he has talked with postal employees who told him “horror” stories of harassment from management.

Kuchynka’s next stop is the Escondido postal station, where last August a 52-year-old career postal carrier, described as a model employee, went on a shooting rampage, killing his wife and two co-workers and wounding a third before shooting himself in the head.

“The stories that came out later was that he was more stressed out from work than from personal problems,” Kuchynka said. “And that’s just one in many cases across America where employees are being harassed or driven to suicide by the Postal Service.”

Eventually, Kuchynka will make his way to Washington, where he will attempt to talk to Congress about investigating the Postal Service, he said.

“Letter carriers and clerks are not machines. They are people, with families and rights of their own,” said Kuchynka, 40, who fasted the first 16 days of his tour.

During his stop in Costa Mesa, Kuchynka paced the parking lot and talked with anyone who would stop to listen. He handed out a personal letter to postal customers that described his life as a teen-ager and how at age 17 he volunteered to serve in Vietnam, where he earned a Purple Heart.

“I felt alone during that time, and I am alone now in my protest against the post office system,” he said.

Kuchynka calls his wife his only supporter and says she is back home with their three children. “She’s making phone calls and answering letters,” he said.

Kuchynka said he was terminated as a letter carrier last December. He said management fired him because of his continual mood swings brought about by prescribed drugs he was taking for depression caused by the war.

Kuchynka insisted that his protest is not a personal vendetta or in any way associated with the postal union. “It is just one man against a corrupt system,” he said.

Costa Mesa Postmaster Jose Diaz later said, “I’ve been in the post office for 29 years, and I have never seen any harassment from management.”

Diaz, in a phone interview, said: “He can take his problem to Washington, D.C., and we’ll see what happens.”