Special Deliverer

A graceful purple canopy of jacaranda shades the whole block. But the biggest shadow along Colbert Avenue is cast by the guy who carries the mail. Have a bad back? Bob Tattsuki will ring the doorbell and hand over your letters so you don’t have to bend down to the mail slot.

Sending a package? Tattsuki will take it to the post office, weigh it and front the cost of the postage for you. Can’t get to the grocery store? Tattsuki will come back after work and take you there in his own car.

That’s the way it’s been since Tattsuki started making his daily rounds through one Mar Vista neighborhood 13 years ago. Along with letters, bills and junk mail, he delivers friendship.

“He takes care of us,” said Lily Kompaniez, who has lived 47 years on the block--since the time bean fields bordered the Westdale subdivision and the jacarandas planted along the curbs were spindly saplings that looked like they would never grow into trees.

When Kompaniez was recovering from cataract surgery, Tattsuki insisted on personally handing her mail to her so she would not have to lean over for it and risk damaging her eyes.

“He also said I should be wearing dark glasses, so he took off his own wraparounds and said, ‘Here, take these,’ ” she recalled.

Follow Tattsuki on his 211-house route along McLaughlin, Coolidge, Colby, Rose, Woodbine and Butler avenues east of the Santa Monica Airport and it seems nearly everyone has a letter carrier story to share.

If there is a large parcel addressed to you, Tattsuki finds a safe spot to hide it if you’re not home. If you are not there to sign for a certified letter, he returns with it after work to save you a trip to the post office.

Leave your front door ajar or your keys in the lock and Tattsuki will ring the bell and tell you. If you absent-mindedly forget your purse on your car’s front seat, he alerts you. If he sees uncollected mail piling up, he checks on your welfare.

After Rochelle Soifer’s blind husband took ill, Tattsuki stopped in daily to cheer him up. And after he died, the mailman returned every day to pet his guide dogs. “The dogs would wait all day for him to come. They loved him,” Soifer recalled.

*

When Bunny Levin’s mother was so sick that she couldn’t get up and around, Tattsuki took time each day to go to a window where he could shout out a greeting to her.

When he spotted a stranger leaving a Coolidge Avenue house, he jotted down the man’s license number and turned it over to police. The intruder was arrested and identified as a suspect in a string of Westside rapes.

After Clyde Pesley suffered a stroke and couldn’t drive, Tattsuki volunteered to chauffeur his wife Ellie to the grocery store. And when she became ill, he drove her husband to the hospital to visit her.

Ellie Pesley died earlier this year. These days, Tattsuki returns to the neighborhood at night and on his day off to drive Clyde Pesley to the market, the bank and to doctors’ appointments.

“Bob was even there the other day cleaning Clyde’s bathroom,” said neighbor Lee Levey. “He’s like a son. He takes personal interest in the families he calls on.”

Tattsuki shrugs off such praise. “I just deliver the mail. I’m just a plain old mailman,” said the 57-year-old bachelor, a Venice resident.

Mar Vista Postmaster Joyce Allen said Tattsuki also waves away postal citations, suggesting that “awards should go to younger people” instead.

*

His reputation has extended to the regional postal headquarters in Los Angeles. There, even those who have urged all local letter carriers to be alert to the needs of older patrons are impressed.

“In addition to being an employee, he’s one of our best customers,” said Jesse Durazo, postmaster and district manager for Los Angeles.

“After he finishes delivering he almost always has to go to the lobby and purchase stamps or mail packages for people on his route.”

Tattsuki said it is the shady, maturing neighborhood that is friendly, not him.

“People stay here a long time,” he said. “You see a lot of old marriages here--it’s nice to see couples still happy and taking care of each other.

“There are a lot of smiles here. You have to smile back.”