HE'S BIG POST OFFICE HELPER.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY

Don Draper stood in the lobby of the Valley Village post office Wednesday morning when a customer walked up and gave him a gentle slap on the back.

``How's it going, Don?'' Steve Heller asked.

``Great,'' Draper replied, smiling as another customer, Marian Murray, bid good morning to the lobby assistant.

A few more people stop to talk with Don before they head out the door with their mail and stamps.

``How's the family?'' they ask. ``Great,'' he replied. ``How's yours?''

It looks like a morning at Starbucks, but it's the post office. People are supposed to be uptight and in a rush at the post office - tired of standing in line looking at their wrist watches wondering why there aren't more postal clerks taking care of them.

They're supposed to be mad, not stopping to chat with the lobby assistant on the way out the door.

But that's what customers were doing Wednesday at the Valley Village post office, one of the Valley's oldest, opening in 1964.

``He's the man, a real people person, always looking out for me,'' Heller said as Don unlocked a door marked ``personnel only'' and came back a few minutes later with a handful of mail.

``Do I need to sign for anything?'' Heller asked.

Don shook his head no, and Heller smiled. He's in and out of the post office in less than two minutes, looking like a guy who just hit the lottery.

A few feet away, a dozen people were standing in line, prepared to spend the next 20 minutes waiting for their turn to see a clerk. They didn't know Don - yet.

Valet postal service? Not exactly, but close.

I stopped by the Valley Village post office because people in this enclave, which used to be called North Hollywood, had told me it was about to close - a victim of Postal Service cutbacks.

It turns out the rumor was only half-true. The carriers at Valley Village have been shifted to a larger postal annex in the area, but the counter service at Valley Village will remain open.

``We're trying to cut operating costs and save money, just like everybody else,'' said Dale Walker, postmaster for the North Hollywood post offices.

Fair enough.

Meanwhile, Don was prowling the customer line, looking to make life a little easier and quicker for people waiting their turn at the counter. Was there anything he could help them with - maybe teach them how to use the self-service machines up front that do some of the same tasks as postal clerks?

He's been with the postal service for 25 years, the last 10 spent here as a lobby assistant after a back injury ended his career as a letter carrier.

Instead of cutting him loose on disability, the Postal Service turned a popular letter carrier into a popular lobby assistant, whose only job is to get customers out of the post office faster.

But a funny thing happened. People met Don, and they're not in such a rush anymore.

``He's taken to the customers and the customers have taken to him,'' said station manager Roy Wood, standing in the lobby watching people gravitate to Don.

``He's trained so many people how to use the machines, and he helps them collect their mail. They never have to stand in line.''

It's more than just standing in line, said Murray, who has been coming to this post office for the past 15 years.

``The man has a way of talking to people that makes them feel like he really cares about the service here, that it's not just a job,'' she says.

There's no magic to what he does, Don says. Only common sense. Ant business - private or public - could do it.

``If you can cut down on people's stress and the time they spend standing in line, why not?'' he says.

Yeah, why not?

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) Don Draper, lobby assistant for the Valley Village post office, offers help to Jacob Guttman of Valley Village as he waits in line on Wednesday. The little post office will soon lose its carriers, but will keep its lobby service.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer