Slain UPS driver made ‘people’s days brighter’
Several days after Mike Lefiti was gunned down in a UPS distribution center, those who lived on his delivery route are still coming to terms with the fact that the UPS delivery man — their UPS delivery man — is no longer around.
On Sunday, Diamond Heights resident Neha Sampat invited people to the sprawling memorial
made for Lefiti outside a Safeway where he always parked his truck to record a few words about the man they lost in Wednesday’s shooting. Sampat plans to give a video of the event to Lefiti’s family to show them how the residents on his route lost much more than their UPS delivery man.
They lost Big Mike, the guy who would wrap packages in plastic when it was raining; the one who they trusted with the keys to their house, and the codes to their garages. They lost Mikey, the big, burly man who always seemed to be at every turn in Diamond Heights, and the one who remembered everyone’s first name, or the nicknames he assigned them.
“He was nice for no reason other than just wanting to make people’s days brighter,” Sampat said.
Lefiti grew up in Daly City, where he graduated from Westmoor High School. He’d worked for UPS for 17 years, most recently covering a route in Diamond Heights. The 46-year-old Hercules resident was one of three people killed when a shooter opened fire in the UPS distribution center on Potrero Hill in San Francisco on Wednesday. Outside the Safeway on a blistering Sunday afternoon, neighbors who never met bonded over Lefiti: his unwavering punctuality, genuine laugh and the light he would bring with every package.
“When we moved back to San Francisco from Hawaii, I wondered if people would be as friendly,” said Shawn Condon, 50, of Noe Valley. “But then we met Mike, and I immediately turned to my husband and was like, that’s it, there is our ‘aloha spirit.’ ”
“He was nice for no reason other than just wanting to make people’s days brighter.” Neha Sampat