EDDINGTON – Don’t ever tell Susan Brawley of Eddington that the U.S. Postal Service doesn’t deliver. She knows otherwise.

When Brawley, a marine sciences professor at the University of Maine, returned March 9 from a five-day trip to North Carolina, she discovered to her horror that all her keys were missing – car, house and university keys – the car key on a separate ring from the others.

“I had no idea where I was going to stay or how I was going to get my car out of airport parking,” Brawley said. Friends and family came to the rescue and she was able to get into her house. But the dilemma of how to get her car out of the airport parking lot without being obliged to pay another week’s parking fee remained unresolved.

The next day, she said, the phone rang, and someone from the Hampden mail processing facility asked if she had lost some keys. That person, Penny, had been given the keys by Brian, another postal employee who had found them.

“I have no idea where he found them, but probably it was at the airport. Someone, perhaps it was Brian – I don’t know – saw the University of California-Berkeley tag, which had just a key registration number on it. He went to the trouble to call California and find out my name,” Brawley said. “The car key alone was worth $100. That’s what it would have cost to replace it. It’s the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened to me. I can’t imagine anyone, even here in Maine, going to all that effort. I am so grateful.”

When the keys were returned to her, by mail, Brawley discovered that the car key had been put on the ring with the house and lab keys, something she had been meaning to do but had never gotten around to it.

She plans to contact Penny and Brian to thank them personally for going above and beyond the call of postal duty on her behalf.