STORIES FROM THE PAST

50 years ago

Local postal employees predict that the strike against the U.S. Post Office could involve every branch in the nation.

“I would like to shake the hand of all of those postmen who walked out in New York,” said Elton C. Counts, president of the El Centro branch of the postal clerks union.

It is the mail carriers who are striking but Counts said that clerks and carriers locally are in sympathy with the striking employees although no strike vote has been taken.

Charles Munsun, head of the El Centro Post Office with the title “officer in charge,” said local postmen have in informal discussion expressed sympathy with the strike that started Wednesday and by Friday night had spread to the West Coast

Brawley postmaster Raleigh Lambe said he had not detected unrest among his 28 carriers and clerks but he admitted the possibility that the strike would go nationwide.

Morale is at a low ebb among all postal employees according to Counts because postal employees, have received “nothing but promises.”

He said government officials who believe that postmen will go back to work because their national union representatives order them to do so or the government obtains a court order are mistaken.

Postmen who walk out broke the law; it was a big jump and after the step is taken, they are not going back until they receive satisfactory conditions, Counts said.

The striking employees will not be deterred by the breaking of an injunction by a federal court or the federal law against striking, since they decided to break the law when they took the strike vote, counts said.

40 years ago

The screams of a 3- year- old girl split the air this morning at the Imperial County Sheriff’s Office as the children and Nicaraguan aliens were briefly reunited with their mothers.

Seven children were taken to the jail where five Nicaraguan women, four of them mothers, and one pregnant woman, are being detained by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The children are being kept at Los Niños, the county home for homeless children, and their fathers are at the El Centro Alien Detention Center.

The reunion was set up by the Sheriff’s Office and county Probation Officer Alex Armenta.

Armenta said the visit was arranged to relieve the anxieties of both the women and the children.

“Things are hard enough for these people, said Armenta. “We don’t have to make it any harder.”

The children, with the exception of the 3- yearold, were calmer after visiting with their mothers, he said. The 3- year- old had been crying for two days, he said.

The women and children are some of the dependents of 22 men, at the alien detention center. The total group may include as many as 50 people. Some women are being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in San Diego.

But they may be only a small part of a much larger group of Nicaraguans and El Salvadorians coming into this country to escape the unrest and economic upheaval in their own countries.

30 years ago

YUMA ( AP) — Eight members of what drug agents say was a cocaine- smuggling ring known as Banda de Muerte — the “Band of Death” — have been arrested after a 10- month investigation.

The arrests took place Saturday in the Yuma area and California, authorities said at a press conference Monday.

Six members of the group were arrested in the Yuma area, where agents seized more than $2 million in cash, three houses and 16 vehicles. At least two more were arrested by the San Bernardino County Sheriff Department, which seized $1 million in cash.

Officers served search warrants at 10 locations in the Yuma and Somerton areas and four search warrants in San Bernardino County, authorities said.

During the investigation, 1,000 pounds of cocaine were seized a few months ago in Anaheim, Calif., said Lt. John Gross, head of the Southwest Border Alliance.

Marijuana and cocaine were sized by Mexican authorities in Hermosillo and San Luis, two Sonoran cities, Gross added.