Mail Carriers Pick Up Tons of Food for Area’s Needy : Charity: Postal workers are greeted with armloads of groceries. It’s the first such effort in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys.

On Saturday, mail carriers did a lot more collecting than delivering.

As they put holiday cards, Christmas presents and credit card bills in mailboxes on their routes, they also picked up several tons of food for the needy.

About 3,000 letter carriers serving a 34,110-square-mile area that includes the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys participated in the collection, the Postal Service’s first holiday food drive in the area.

And while some postal workers worried that the effort might not be successful, by day’s end officials were generally impressed by the large amount of food collected.

“I’ve got more food than a supermarket here now,” said Randi Schmalberg, supervisor of delivery at the Woodland Hills Post Office. “We’ve got more food than mail. . . . I don’t know where we’re going to put it all.”

“We probably have three tons of food here,” said Jon Gaunce, local president of the National Assn. of Letter Carriers, which sponsored the collection with the U.S. Postal Service’s Van Nuys Customer Services District.

The district also covers Glendale and parts of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, as well as Valley areas.

Early last week, carriers delivered more than 46,000 flyers asking postal customers to leave donations of canned and other food items near their mailboxes for pickup on Saturday, said Larry Dozier, a U.S. Postal Service spokesman.

As they began their rounds, several postal workers said they feared that there would be little participation.

“I have no idea how this is going to go,” said Rhonda Pratt, 28, as she left the post office to begin her route near Burbank Boulevard and Fallbrook Avenue.

But soon she found that residents of about every fourth or fifth house had left an item or two.

Canned vegetables, fruit, soup or corned beef hash were among the most commonly donated foods. But some residents donated candy, pasta or instant rice.

The distribution system used by the Postal Service is ideal for food collection, employees said, because a postal carrier passes every residence and business on a daily basis.

“We’re the perfect people to do this,” Pratt said. “I think it’s great. I really enjoy getting a chance to help people and do my job at the same time.”

Most of the residents on Pratt’s route who left groceries put them in their mailboxes.

Or they left the items in plastic bags on the ground nearby.

But a few came out of their houses and greeted Pratt with armloads of groceries.

Robyn Chiate kept an eye out for Pratt from her residence in the 22800 block of Dolorosa Street and handed the mail carrier a full-sized grocery bag that contained about a dozen cans of food.

“I didn’t want to leave anything out front. I was worried kids might grab it and make a mess,” Chiate said. “I really wanted to donate some things. I hope they do this every year.”

The donations will be distributed to the Haven Hills Home for Battered Women in Canoga Park, MEND, a nonprofit social service agency in Pacoima, and Care and Share, a nonprofit group in Simi Valley.