March 27 is a special date for Martin Perez. Not only was March 27 his last day of work before retirement as the postmaster of Patagonia, but it’s the same date he started with the U.S. Postal Service back in 1999.
“I worked in the Postal Service for 27 years and today is my 27th anniversary,” Perez said on his last day in the office. “I started March 27, 1999, in the Nogales Post Office. Couple years later, I transferred to the Green Valley Post Office, where I was a supervisor learning for about seven years. In 2007, I got promoted to the postmaster position for a little town called Pomerene.”
Although Perez held that position from 2007 to 2012, he explained, “I was never there. I was always doing assignments, details, audits and adjustments and all kinds of stuff in many, many different offices from Arivaca to Willcox to Vail to Sasabe.”
His boss, who is now retired, “made me her right-hand man.”
Things changed in 2012 when Perez applied for the Patagonia postmaster position and was appointed. “But since I was doing assignments all over other offices, I never came to this office,” he said. “I never took over the office until 2015.”
One could say Perez was born to the postal service.
“I am from Mexico originally, and my father retired as a postmaster from the Mexican post office service,” he said. “It never crossed my mind to work for the postal service in the U.S., but one day, I was on Broadway in Tucson driving by the El Con Mall. It was almost 6 o’clock in the afternoon, and there was a sign on the side of the road – ‘Now accepting applications for the postal service.’ I turned around at the light.”
And the rest is history.
“I’m a person with great faith, and I believe in extraordinary things. Just turning around, that’s what opened my life to a great career, a job with great benefits, and then most important of all, the great customers,” Perez said.
Perez has been at the Patagonia Post Office long enough to see big changes. In particular, the package volume has increased threefold because of all the online ordering, particularly from Amazon.
He also shared that the biggest challenge he faced when he started at Patagonia was getting the women who had been here to accept him as postmaster because everything had been run without a postmaster for some time.
“I had to call the co-workers together,” he noted, “and I said, ‘OK, I understand you guys been running this for a long time like this. I’m not here to make any changes. I’m not here to make your life miserable. I’m here to do my job just like you, so we’re all a team, and we’re gonna paddle together to get the job done every day. I’m here to give you the tools to do your job and I expect you to do the same.'”
The air was cleared, he said, and they worked well together from that point on.
During an interview with the Patagonia Regional Times on his last day, Perez was constantly being hailed by customers at the office window, wishing him congratulations on his retirement, and acknowledging how much he would be missed. One patron called out, “I never saw you without a smile on your face, Martin. I will sure miss that. Thank you so much!”
No one has been assigned to replace Perez as postmaster, but Albert Gomez, who has worked alongside him, will take over the office for now. Perez highly recommended Gomez to his superiors and encouraged him to submit a letter of interest.
Perez found the last week, and particularly his last day of work, bittersweet. He looks forward to retirement, playing his guitar more in a band during the Spanish Mass at Our Lady of Fatima, and having more time to devote to his wife, two sons and two granddaughters.
At the same time, “I am already missing everything here,” he said. “Even today, they surprised me with a little celebration out there. I was in tears this morning.
“I don’t think it has sunk in what this is all about.”
In his typical gracious manner, Perez asked to extend a personal thank you to the community he served.
“I want to thank every one of my great customers and this community for your times, for your smiles, for your business, sending packages all over to the family members and for everything that you do for this community because (this) is a great community. There are a lot of people participating in different things, voluntarily, not expecting to receive anything back and that is greatly appreciated,” he said. “Because you wouldn’t get to see that in every other community. Most of the people around the world are against each other, bumping heads. Not here. I’ve noticed this and that is so great. Appreciate it. I thank Patagonia immensely for everything they have done, not only for me as a member of the postal service but for this community in general.”