He Throws Luck for a Loop and Survives : Chain letters: Reporter checks out the “St. Jude,” granddaddy of the genre.

On the first day of 1994, the clutch went out on my car. On the second day, I caught a head-banging, chest-ripping cold. On the third day, a chain letter arrived in the mail.

“This paper has been sent to you for good luck,” it said.

“It has been around the world nine times. The luck has been sent to you. You will receive good luck within four days of receiving this letter, provided, in turn, you send it on.”

Of all junk mail, is any more irritating than the chain letter? It comes unbidden, unwelcome, forcing on us a choice we never sought, declaring that good fortune is no matter of luck after all.

The letter bore no return address, no signature. Just “St. Jude” typed at the bottom.

“THIS IS NO JOKE,” it said, driving home the point with examples of people who built or broke the chain:

“An RAF officer received $170,000; Joe Elliot received $40,000 and lost it because he broke the chain. . . . Darlan Fairchild received the letter and, not believing, threw it away and died nine days later.”

Great. A photocopied extortion note, with fate as both payoff and threat. Time to call in the feds--specifically, Paul Griffo of the U.S. Postal Service’s inspection office in Washington.

As I read him the letter, including the part about its going around the world nine times, he stopped me.

“Ah, the St. Jude letter,” he said. “Nine is a low estimate of how many times that thing has been around the world. It’s as old as dirt.”

His office keeps track of chain letters. When they involve the exchange of money, they are considered illegal lotteries.

Many versions tell you to send a dollar (or $10 or $100) to the name at the top of a list. Then you’re supposed to retype the list, leaving off that name and adding your own at the bottom before sending it to five or 10 or 20 friends. Before long, such letters promise, your mailbox will be stuffed full o’ cash.

There are also some non-monetary chains the Postal Service considers relatively harmless--Little Golden Book chains, circulated among children; dish towel chains; even panty chains for women’s underwear.

But there is no chain letter like the St. Jude chain letter, Griffo said. It is the granddaddy of all chain letters, by far the most persistent and widely circulated. The wording changes over the years; new testimonials of luck replace old ones. “But it remains uncannily the same,” he said.

Because the St. Jude letter doesn’t ask for money, it is not illegal, Griffo said. Just annoying.

The letter itself claims the chain started in Venezuela, written by one Saul Anthony DeGrou, a missionary. Griffo has no idea where it really comes from, nor who keeps it going.

“Once it is started, it’s almost impossible to track down the origin of anything like that,” he said. “It is almost a folk tradition. It becomes a superstitious observance more than anything.”

In popular Roman Catholic belief, St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes--an appropriate symbol for the Postal Service’s futile efforts to stop this and other chain letters over the decades.

“I think it’s a fairly safe bet that if you throw it away, nothing is going to happen to you,” Griffo said.

Indeed, if everyone kept the chain going, it wouldn’t be lucky. It would be apocalyptic. Suppose I sent 20 letters as instructed, and each recipient sent 20 letters within four days, and everyone down the line did the same.

Assuming the Postal Service delivered each batch within three days, then by Day 57 there would be 25.6 billion sheets of luck wafting around the planet. By Day 92, there would be 81.9 quadrillion letters, or enough 8 1/2-by-11 inch pieces of paper to cover the entire United States 634 sheets deep. Not to mention envelopes.

Another few weeks and civilization would be buried miles beneath shifting dunes of photocopied letters, each one proclaiming, “This paper has been sent to you for good luck.”

Of course, not everyone passes the letter on. Just enough to keep it alive.

“People want to believe,” Griffo said. “They want to believe that something is going to be a panacea for all their problems, that this is finally it, this is the good omen they’ve been looking for.”

I’ll find my omens elsewhere, thank you. After reading the chain letter, I realized the wastebasket was a challenging 10 feet away. I crumpled, aimed, threw--and swish . A perfect shot.

I felt luckier already.