One way private schools make a few bucks is by selling "Food for Thought" gift cards, which can be redeemed at department stores and supermarkets. My wife, a teacher at a local Catholic school, routinely buys them.

The other night, I mistakenly dumped one, along with several letters, into a drive-by mailbox outside a branch post office. By the next morning, when I tracked down the branch's phone number, the mail had been collected and trucked to the Postal Service's Nerve Central on the North Side.

I called the post office's lost and found department -- technically the Department of Claims and Inquiry -- confessed to Joe Kaminski what I'd done, and described the card (about as big as a dollar bill). Kaminski said he'd check. I said, "It's a needle in a haystack." Joe said, "You never know."

Right. Thanks for the encouragement, Joe. That was the end of that.

At least this wasn't losing all my travelers' checks in Rome which, thanks to a pickpocket, I did a few years ago. Or my checkbook, which I did three years ago, all on my own. Or my watch -- which I found after a year -- in a box of stored Christmas ornaments.

The $50 card had $28.71 left to spend at Giant Eagle, and the Postal Service has weightier matters to contend with (besides rain and snow and gloom of night) such as pit bulls and letters turning up five years late. Competition from FedEx. Contributions to America's lexicon: "Going postal." And a letter carrier who, minding his own business, is shot and killed by a 9-year-old boy in Crafton-Ingram. (And cartoonists taking figurative potshots.)

We all complain about the price of stamps and magazines arriving chewed up; getting the neighbors' bills and finding Christmas cards in our yard after the snow melts. This time I couldn't blame the post office. And to a crew handling a mountain of mail, a piece of paper worth 28 bucks is a molehill. It's akin to the New York Police Department laughing decades earlier when I reported my VW Bug had been squashed by a hit-and-run driver in the middle of the night.

Joe Kaminski called me back three days later: They had found the card.

Yes, I was stunned.

After all the hits the post office takes, the guys over on the North Side had won one.

Will this inoculate the Post Office from bad press? No -- even the press isn't inoculated from bad press. Does this mean no more mangled or misrouted mail? I'm guessing not. Will someone else in another city have such good fortune? Hard to say.

But last month, Pittsburgh's main post office on California Avenue proved that "customer service" is not just empty government -- or corporate -- jargon.

The next time you pull a stunt such as chucking your "Food for Thought" card into a mailbox , call Joe Kaminski. He won't promise you'll get it back, but he'll do more than listen: He'll try.