Meet Kathy Stinnett One of the greatest benefits of living inside TGO is that we have our own mail center. Imagine every time you needed this service, you had to drive downtown and deal with the crowds, especially during holiday season. Well, we are not only lucky to have this service onsite, but we are also lucky to have Kathy Stinnett, who has managed our mail center for the past 16 years. Kathy has lived in TGO for about 25 years. She and her husband, Bill, first started on Oak Cove with an RV lot and then built their house on Grande Haven where they’ve lived for over 21 years. In her former life, Kathy was office manager at the Dearborn Sausage Company in Dearborn, MI, where she handled all the shipping responsibilities for the hams and sausages her company distributed domestically. Bill worked with Ford Motor Company at the Romulus, MI, parts redistribution center. After retiring, they first moved to Kentucky and lived on Lake Barkley for seven years. They then moved to TGO. Between the two of them they have six children and several grandchildren.
Kathy has seen a lot of changes to our mail service here in TGO. One of those was the impact of the internet, especially Amazon... Kathy started working at the mail center 16 years ago. Back then, the mail volume was no where near what it is today. Our current mail center was originally a storage garage for an antique firetruck (that’s a whole other story). Kathy has seen a lot of changes to our postal service here in TGO. One of those was the impact of the internet, especially Amazon, which has created a mass volume of packages that both arrive and ship from our mail center. “Right now, we handle about 3,000 packages a month,”
16
- TGO’s Mail Guru
explained Kathy, “and that is just the the RV sites.” Our mail center and Kathy’s staff is responsible for all mail and packages related to the RV sites. This includes the streets of Sunset, Greenwing, Club Cove, Coach Club, Windsong, Oak Cove, Fawn Trail and the RV sites on Plantation. There are two separate mail routes in TGO; the RV sites and the Residential sites. The US Postal worker you see in the office and at the outside parcel lockers is distributing the mail for the residential route and takes care of the mail and packages that are delivered to those houses. Our mail center is almost a full-service facility. The only thing they don’t do is handle overnight mail and some things related to international mail, like international packages requiring customs forms. Besides Kathy there are four other part-time employees; Nancy, Pat, Debbie and Tacy. “It takes about a year for a new employee to learn everything involved in the job,” claims Kathy. “Even though we are not official postal employees, we still abide by all postal rules and regulations.” When we were there for the interview, we joked with Kathy about receiving large boxes - which is difficult for her staff as they are limited on space to store too many boxes, let alone large ones. She went on to explain that she has received mattresses, a power washer and even a 6 foot electric child’s car. She’s hoping no one will be shipping her any refrigerators any time soon.
