Steamboat Springs — JoAnn Lombardi, 81, stepped out of her white Subaru Outback one morning last week on Routt County Road 29 right next to a row of mailboxes right where Trout Creek tumbles out of the foothills of the Flat Tops mountain range. The longtime rural mail carrier handed rancher Bernard Knott an “If it fits, it ships” parcel, probably for the last time.
After delivering the mail on the same little rural route for 47 years, Lombardi is retiring. Her last day is Monday.
Lombardi and Knott briefly reminisced about the time Knott came to Lombardi’s rescue with a team of draft horses and pulled her old Toyota Land Cruiser out of a snowbank.
“I didn’t really go in the ditch,” she recalled. “I didn’t land on my roof or anything. Bernard was in the field feeding cattle, so he unhitched the team and pulled me out.”
via Rural mail carrier has been making her rounds for 47 years | Steamboat Pilot & Today.
