For nearly two weeks in January, the U.S. Postal Service ignored the residents of the Hillcrest Retirement Community in Scarborough.

From Jan. 20-31, no mail was delivered to or picked up from the tidy neighborhood of 330 homes tucked off Route 1, the owner and residents said. No birthday cards or billing statements. No annual tax documents. No life-saving prescription medications.

Theresa Desfosses, co-owner of the age 55-plus community, fielded questions and complaints from residents as the service interruption stretched across 10 delivery days.

“The biggest concern was prescriptions,” she said Friday. “Eight people were waiting for prescriptions. One person has cancer.”

Finally, on Thursday afternoon, after Desfosses and many Hillcrest residents reported the problem to multiple local and federal officials, a mail carrier delivered several bins of mail.

But what caused such an extended service interruption is unclear, and Hillcrest residents and others have little faith that it won’t happen again since it’s happened before.

Steve Doherty, a spokesman for the USPS Northeast Region, disputed that a route went without delivery for 10 days.

“There were some delays last week in Scarborough due to employee availability issues,” Doherty said Friday in an email. “As a result, mail delivery was sporadic.”

That meant a route may not have been delivered each day, he said, but it was rotated to ensure delivery was not missed on consecutive days.

“So, the 10 days without mail delivery would be inaccurate,” he said. “Management has shifted resources from neighboring facilities to bring the office current and has plans in place to keep it that way.”

Members of Maine’s congressional delegation have been working on what is described as chronically delayed and worsening mail delivery for years.

Last September, they wrote a letter to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy asking him to urgently address problems outlined in a report from the USPS Office of Inspector General. Requested by Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree, the inspector general’s review found over 150,000 pieces of delayed mail across five mail delivery units in southern Maine.

Desfosses said she reported Hillcrest’s delivery interruption to Collins’ office, which provided Postal Service complaint forms to be filled out by residents. Don Cushing, a Scarborough town councilor, reached out to a member of independent Sen. Angus King’s staff, who assured him the senator is still working on the issue.

“The baseline for postal delivery is (in spite of) rain, snow, sleet or hail,” Cushing said Friday. “But the truth is, people rely on the Postal Service for many important things, and delays can be anything from annoying to upsetting.”

Cushing said Town Manager Tom Hall received many complaints from Hillcrest residents and reported the problem to Postal Service officials.

One Hillcrest resident contacted the inspector general’s office directly, first online and then by phone around noon Thursday. She was at the bank of mailboxes when a postal carrier finally arrived around 4 p.m. that day. She asked that her name be withheld for personal safety reasons.

“He had six bins of mail,” the resident said. “He was there for 45 minutes, putting it in the mailboxes.”

The resident said she’s equally concerned about the dependability of mail collection after she deposited several time-sensitive pieces in Hillcrest’s outgoing mail slot. She’s an accountant for a Portland company, and the 1099 income tax forms she deposited had to be postmarked by Jan. 31.

“I had to file them electronically on Tuesday because they had to be postmarked by Wednesday, and I knew that wasn’t happening,” she said. “It was like they were holding my mail hostage.”

The woman said she’ll never send important mail from Hillcrest again. At the very least, she said, Postal Service officials should have a “game plan” that ensures Hillcrest’s mail is delivered at least once each week.

“Don’t leave over 300 homes without mail delivery for almost two weeks,” she said.

Hillcrest is on a route served by rural letter carriers. The head of the union local representing rural carriers didn’t respond to a request for an interview.

Mark Seitz is president of Local 92 of the National Association of Letter Carriers, whose members serve city routes in Portland, South Portland, Westbrook, Scarborough, Falmouth, Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland Foreside and Peaks Island. He said city and rural letter carriers face many of the same problems and little has changed since delivery issues intensified four years ago.

“We are still severely short-staffed on the city side, and I believe the rurals (have it) maybe even worse than us,” Seitz said in an email. “It certainly isn’t for a lack of effort on our end to try to get as much delivered as we can.”

Seitz said both city and rural carriers are working “ungodly” hours.

“We had one carrier work over 90 hours last week and a handful more worked over 80,” he said.

Still, Seitz said, he found it hard to believe a route could go more than three days without delivery.

“There would be such a backup in the office that people wouldn’t be able to move,” he said.

Desfosses finds it hard to believe, too. Especially since it has happened before, about two months ago, although that service interruption was shorter, she said.

She has called everyone she knows, trying to ensure regular delivery for Hillcrest residents. She even went to the regional headquarters in Portland to speak with the postmaster, but she never made contact.

“I can’t figure out how to fix the problem,” Desfosses said. “I just don’t know what to do.”

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