Sycamore Highlands mailboxes continue to be broken into.  The community mailboxes in our neighborhood were not built to prevent burglary.  If your community mailbox is repeatedly broken into, you might consider purchasing a new mailbox – USPS won’t do it (they have refused to take responsibility for these mailboxes).

You can purchase your own unit through a company like:  http://www.lowpriceclustermailboxes.com/  .  My neighborhood purchased a new standard 13 door mailbox unit from this company (cost about $1100) and every neighbor chipped in their share of the price.  The mailbox base unit fit right over the bolts of the old unit, though the base is thicker on the new unit so that the bolts were just barely long enough to work.  You can also reach out to our USPS authorized repairman Mark Guizlo (http://guizloinstallations.com/) who can purchase and install a new unit for you.

Within a few days of installing our new community mailbox, someone did try to break in…but they gave up quickly, just a few scratch marks to show where they tried to get a hacksaw blade into the unit to cut off a door hasp. Nobody has tried to break in since; though it was broken into weekly when our old box was at this same location.  We also heard that RPD caught someone last week who had checks from one of my neighbors that were stolen from the mailbox, so at least one thief is out of service.

Do consider a new mailbox unit if your unit is repeatedly broken into – the cost of a new box is less than the cost of dealing with identity theft.

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Sycamore Highlands Community Action Group
6012 Abernathy Dr.
Riverside, CA 92507
(951) 369-3510