Post office won’t change even if Sunset Beach does

Although a controversial plan to annex Sunset Beach has sparked plenty of worry in the tiny coastal community, Corinne Brubaker insists there’s one aspect of small-town life that won’t change: the post office.

For half a century, the Sunset Beach Post Office on Pacific Coast Highway between 10th and 11th streets has functioned as the community’s hub. Aside from a recent coat of buttercup-yellow paint, the one-story building has changed little in that time.

Today, as the neighboring city of Huntington Beach seeks to absorb Sunset Beach, residents fear losing their quaint post office, where residents often are greeted by name and sometimes with a hug. Brubaker, the Sunset Beach postmaster, says they need not worry.

“It’s been this way since the beginning,” she said. “Huntington Beach can’t change the system.”

Sunset Beach is nestled just north of Huntington Beach between the Pacific Ocean and Huntington Harbour. Its roughly 1,300 residents have never had home mail delivery. Instead, residents pick up their mail from rows of P.O. boxes.

The post office is open to everyone, and some Huntington Beach and Seal Beach residents have postal boxes there, but all Sunset Beach residents — renters and homeowners alike — have access to numbered boxes free of charge.

Residents say they aren’t irritated by the lack of home delivery. They love picking up their mail, said Greg Griffin, president of the Sunset Beach Community Assn.

“There is a lot of identity wrapped up in the post office,” he said. “You get to recognize who your neighbors are.”

Resident Richard Moody, 93, a contractor, built the post office after serving during World War II. He built it for a local who wanted a “little” building, he said. It started out as part ice cream parlor and part post office, and the post office function ultimately took over the building, Moody said.

On the front of the building is a bulletin board where people hang fliers and the latest Sunset Beach Community Assn. and Sunset Beach Sanitary District agendas and minutes. Residents regularly set up tables outside the post office to sell tickets for community events and fundraisers.

Brubaker, a 30-year post office employee, has worked at the Sunset Beach Post Office for roughly four years. She said she knows what time every day she will be seeing certain residents. Their packages often are ready for them even before they present their pickup tickets.

When longtime resident Julie Lurie moved to Sunset Beach, she would get letters addressed to “Julie, Sunset Beach” and no further address.

Although letter-senders need to include a full address these days, the appeal of the community’s mail system hasn’t faded for Lurie, who said she goes to the post office every day.

“I talk to my neighbors on the way,” she said. “It’s so fun. You always see people you know and just catch up on whatever is going on in town.”

Over the last year, Brubaker has heard a lot of talk about annexation and incorporation. Although the emotionally charged subject has caused some discord in the community, tempers have never flared at the post office, she said.

And Brubaker would know. It’s hard to keep a secret in such a small building.

“We hear a lot back there,” she said.

britney.barnes@latimes.com