Postmaster withstood 24 hours of uncertainty

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 16, 2001

ST. PETERSBURG -- It was an uneventful Friday for St. Petersburg postmaster Thomas Pawlowski. Meetings and paperwork. Later, he and his wife planned a quiet dinner with friends.

Then, about 4 p.m., he noticed the five postal inspectors nosing around the city's main post office on First Avenue N, home to his own office.

Pawlowski, 48, sensed something amiss. The inspectors are the detectives of the Postal Service. They carry badges. They ask questions. For your pedestrian case of mail fraud, one might show up every now and then. But five? Never.

He called his wife, Cheryl, also a postal employee, and said he wasn't going to make dinner. "I've got five postal inspectors here," he told her. Enough said.

Something big was up. But Pawlowski didn't know what. The inspectors wouldn't tell him. But given the news in recent weeks, he guessed their attention was on one thing: anthrax.

So began 24 hours of uncertainty for St. Petersburg's new postmaster, reluctantly thrust into a maelstrom of media attention and law enforcement scrutiny. Pawlowski's is a low-profile office that usually makes the news when the post office gives tips about avoiding Christmas mail delays.

Pawlowski, appointed postmaster in December, was alone in his office when he turned his television to CNN on Friday. About 6 p.m., Pawlowski learned from the network why the St. Petersburg post office was getting all the attention.

Two letters with a St. Petersburg postmark had arrived at the New York Times and NBC bearing a suspicious white powder. An NBC worker had anthrax. Had the deadly bacteria flowed through Pawlowski's post office?

"We knew we had a bit of a problem," he said in characteristic understatement.

Pawlowski, who has three adult children, said he's a calm man by nature. He relaxes by collecting baseball cards, 400,000 of them packed in a closet, floor to ceiling. His passion is baseball. With 27 years of service in the post office, from jobs as a mail sorter in Tampa to a variety of management positions from Jacksonville to Missouri, most of his adult life has revolved around the U.S. mails. He had seen and heard most everything. But this was something wholely unexpected.

Pawlowski and plant manager John Hoyle immediately began meeting with postal employees -- 700 work in the office and another 800 elsewhere in Pinellas -- to answer questions and reassure them.

Workers were allowed to wear gloves and masks. A few with flu symptoms were allowed to go to the hospital for anthrax tests. A dozen employees too anxious to work went home.

The postal inspectors later apologized to Pawlowski for keeping him in the dark. He said he understood. He said he didn't need to know. The investigation wasn't his job.

"They've got their job to do," he said.

For the first 24 hours, Pawlowski spent much of his time dealing with dozens of calls from reporters.

Pawlowski, a native of Amsterdam, N.Y., who now lives in Tampa, said he worked until after midnight Friday and came in at 6:30 a.m. the next day. By Saturday, he learned from CNN that St. Petersburg was safe.

The letter to NBC that carried anthrax came from Trenton, N.J.

Through all the uncertainty, his workers came to work and delivered the mail without a hitch, he said.

"We're not happy another post office has anthrax," Pawlowski said. "But we do have a big sense of relief that we don't."

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