Local business collects donated cell phones for soldiers overseas
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Local business collects donated cell phones for soldiers overseas
By Melody Hanatani
Daily Press Staff Writer
WILSHIRE BOULEVARD — A local mail packaging business is making it a lot easier for U.S. troops to get in contact with their family.
From now until March, the Handle with Care Packaging Store on Wilshire Boulevard will serve as a repository for donated, used cell phones, collected and shipped to a Michigan-based cell phone refurbishing company in exchange for calling minutes for U.S. soldiers overseas.
The packaging store is among the more than 400 franchises under the umbrella of the Postal Annex that is participating in the Cell Phones for Soldiers program, which collects old cell phones and ships them to ReCellular Inc., which assesses each phone and transfers that value to minutes, Laura Longobardi, spokeswoman for Postal Annex, said.
“We try to get our stores involved in as many community events as we can,” Longobardi said.
The donation drive at Handle with Care Packaging Store, owned by school teacher and former serviceman Frank Letcher, started earlier this month and has collected two phones thus far.
“When you’re overseas, you don’t have any family support and you don’t know what’s going on,” Letcher, who served in the Vietnam War, said. “It’s important to have that information and that connection.
“Your connection usually came through U.S. mail,” he added.
The program was founded in 2004 by two then-middle school students — Brittany and Robbie Berquist — from Norwell, Mass. who after watching a television news segment about a soldier who had accumulated an $8,000 cell phone bill, decided to raise money to help the local military man.
The two kids managed to collect around $600 when they learned that the soldier’s cell phone bill had been waived. The Berquist decided to instead focus their efforts on recycling cell phones to donate the minutes to soldiers, according to their father, Bob Berquist.
The program has grown over the past eight years and there are now phone drop-off sites at all 1,800 AT&T-owned stores nationwide as well as 4,000 other locations, collecting more than 60,000 cell phones in 2007.
“It’s incredible to see the growth in them just by being able to do this,” the elder Berquist said of his children — Brittany, now a junior at Norwell High School and Robbie, now a sophomore.
ReCellular became involved in the program more than a year ago, the third cell phone refurbishing company to come on board since the inception of the program. Each donated cell phone ranges from a value of 20 cents to $100 dollars, averaging about one hour of call time per phone, according to company spokesman Mike Newman. The company runs similar programs with other charities.
“This one is really remarkable in that it truly was these two teens who just made it happen and still make it happen,” Newman said. “For our employees here, there’s excitement and pride to be able to support what they’re doing.”
Considering that many military families send packages to their kin overseas, it was a natural fit for Postal Annex to have its 400 franchises, which includes Handle with Care and Sunshine Pack and Ship, to participate, Steve Goble, the vice president of marketing, said.
“This was a great complement to that kind of service,” Goble said.
Though running a nationwide program has been exhausting many times, Berquist said she doesn’t plan to slow down and is looking to expand to other countries whose troops also serve elsewhere.
The Berquist siblings often get letters of thanks from troops and their families. One in particular really stood out.
“There’s one we received from a soldier who said our phone cards were able to get him and his troops a little bit of heaven in the middle of a war,” Brittany Berquist said. “That was amazing to hear and it made us realize what we were doing was making a difference.”
The Handle with Care Packaging Store is located at 2510 Wilshire Blvd.
Jump hedline: Packaging store collects cell phones for troops
Suggested pullquote: “This one is really remarkable in that it truly was these two teens who just made it happen and still make it happen.”
Mike Newman spokesman, ReCellular Inc.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 13, 2008. Read the original PDF.