BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Officials with the U.S. Postal Service named the Melrose Post Office in honor of a letter carrier who was killed in a dog attack two years ago.
Five dogs attacked Pamela Jane Rock after her vehicle broke down near Interlachen on Aug. 21, 2022.
A resident stopped the attack by firing a weapon into the ground and scaring the canines away. Rock was flown to UF Health Shands in Gainesville, where she died.
No prosecution, new law proposed
Following Rock’s death, State Attorney R.J. Larizza declined to prosecute the owner of the canines after an investigation concluded that the dogs’ owner tried to surrender the animals twice, including 10 days before the attack.
The report stated that before the fatal incident, at least one of the dogs attacked a 50-year-old man, sending him to the hospital, and charged a woman’s car, damaging the vehicle.
The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office recommended a misdemeanor charge for the owner of the five dogs, but Larizza’s office declined, citing the owner’s efforts to repair the fence that restrained the animals and his attempts to surrender the canines to animal control.
The attack also prompted State Rep. Bobby Payne to sponsor a bill in the Florida House that would have required the Department of Agriculture to maintain a dangerous dog registry. The new database would have allowed residents to look up dogs declared dangerous by local authorities. However, Payne’s bill died in committee.
A servant’s heart
Rock was the youngest of 14 children, and during the Monday, August 26 ceremony in Melrose, eight of her siblings paid tribute to their baby sister.
“It was definitely a tragic loss,” said Maria Rock-Risse. “She didn’t have a family of her own. However, she made all her siblings her family, attending any events she was invited to.”
Rock-Risse said her sister had a servant’s heart.
“She worked with the community both in Melrose and in Gainesville,” the ninth Rock sibling said. “She was a WIC nutritionist, working with the families that needed education, nutritional-wise, both in Gainesville, Georgia, and North Carolina.”
Rock-Risse added that Pam also taught nutrition on an Indian reservation near Yellowstone National Park.
“She actually saw the (job) opening to be a postal worker, and she thought that would just be the coolest thing, something different, something new, and she could be out with people and talk,” Rock-Risse added. “She loved it. She hadn’t been there very long before the accident happened.”
All of Rock’s family members wore t-shirts honoring her memory and promoting the Pam Rock Act, the bill Payne sponsored last year. They said they are trying again to get the legislation passed.
Rock-Risse said that had the law been in force two years ago, the owner of the dogs that killed Pam would have been required to pick up his mail at a post office rather than have it delivered to his home.
Backbone of the postal service
Maged Aziz, the U.S. Postal Service’s Florida District 1 Manager said letter carriers like Rock are the backbone of the postal service.
He said letter carriers bring people everything from bills to birthday cards, mail that invokes the full range of emotions, from anger to joy.
“We make you upset when you go to the mailbox and see that hefty insurance bill,” he told the crowd. “We also make you happy by bringing you a birthday card that you can actually put on your refrigerator. I don’t see any of us putting a text message on our refrigerators.”
Stephanie Peters, the Interlachen Postmaster, called Rock one of the most cheerful and optimistic employees she had worked with.
“She would come in the morning singing songs,” Peters recalled. “In her case, she would come in early and put candy at everyone’s case, so when they came in, they had candy waiting for them. She would even send texts of pictures of the sunrise in the morning.”
Rock-Risse told the crowd that she and Pam grew up together in Plantation. As Rock-Risse was graduating from the University of Florida’s nursing school, Pam was a freshman who played in the university’s Pride of the Sunshine marching band.
“She was my hero,” Rock-Risse said of her younger sibling, adding that after Rock-Risse delivered her third child, Pam stayed with her for five months, helping out with her new nephew.
A family of character
Congressman Aaron Bean told the crowd gathered at the post office that naming the building in honor of Rock literally took an act of Congress.
“Congress doesn’t agree on almost anything,” he said, “except honoring the life of an individual who made us all better.”
Bean presented the family with the bill signed by President Joe Biden authorizing the naming of the Melrose Post office in honor of Pamela Jane Rock.
State Rep. Bobby Payne said Rock’s life of service and selflessness reflects her family.
“This is a family of character,” he said, “a family of demeanor, a family of professionalism.”
Payne, who served his final term in the Florida House earlier this year, said that in his discussions with the family about the Pamela Rock Act, the siblings were not seeking retribution for their sister’s death but rather recognition so a similar tragedy would not happen again.
“I was touched by that, and so we ran a bill this past year, didn’t make it to the finish line, but I’ve already gotten from Senator (Jay) Collins that he’s going to run it again (next) year and it makes the most common sense of any of the almost 30 bills I’ve passed in eight years.”
