| Eighty-seven-year-old Retha Casto of Hackers Valley pleaded with the US Postal Regulatory Commission, "For God's sake and yours too please think of the people â not just the money."
The postal service has decided to close her post office after 153 years.
Casto's complaint has spurred the commission to investigate whether the service violated procedures in closing 96 post offices in 34 states during the past five years.
The closures were typically modest operations, situated in leased space in the back of general stores or in other small buildings.
The Creston Post Office in Wirt County was likely one of them.
The postal service is in serious financial trouble with a sharp decline in mail because of the Internet and the recession.
The Postal Service declared the closures an emergency over soon-to-expire leases, like Creston.
Before the Postal Service closed the Hacker Valley office, it held a public meeting to tell residents the building's lease had been terminated, the post office was losing money and a building freeze would prevent the construction of a new office.
In McCausland, Iowa, community members held yard sales, pig roasts and bake sales to raise money to build a new post office.
Technically the issue is a dispute over the distinction between closing a post office and suspending service.
The commission is saying the evidence strongly suggests the Postal Service used suspension procedures at the Hacker Valley post office last July to skirt the closing requirements laid out by Congress.
The Postal Service has raised rates, cut the number of employees from 800,000 to 623,000 and eliminated 12,000 carrier routes because of a $7 billion deficit.
See related story FAMOUS CRESTON POST OFFICE CLOSING
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