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Charlotte Amalie
Friday, March 29, 2024
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@Work: Keep Me Posted

Sept. 13, 2005 – Ray Sullivan always dreamed of owning a business similar to a small-town post office. Her wish came true in January when she opened Keep Me Posted at Cocoloba shopping center in Coral Bay, St. John.
"Coral Bay is completely expanding. There's much more of a need for services in Coral Bay," she said.
She said she picked Cocoloba shopping center because it was the only spot with commercial space for rent. The shopping center opened around the same time as Keep Me Posted.
"And the whole complex is the new happening place," she said.
Keep Me Posted offers mail service, sells office supplies, sends faxes and e-mails, makes copies, ships packages, does typing and scans documents. Additionally, it provides high-speed Internet access on its public computers.
The business also picks up and stores boxes for people for several months at a time, so they won't have to travel with large amounts of luggage.
Keep Me Posted also picks up packages at the Post Office, so customers won't have to make the trip to Cruz Bay.
Sullivan said Keep Me Posted offers services to the growing number of area businesses.
Her business is growing as word gets around about this new business. "Every month is a little bit more," she said.
She likened St. John to her hometown of Mechanicsville, N.Y., a small community located in what most New Yorkers refer to as "Upstate."
"It's this small town I came from, only in a different place," she said, noting that her parents raised her and her four siblings to care for each other and the community.
She said she likes it that she knows her neighbors and the people she meets every day.
Sullivan, 47, whose real first name may come as a surprise to folks who have known her for years – it's Maureen – arrived on St. John in 1986 after working for a year as a cytotechnologist, or a person who reads slides that show things like cancer cells, a skill Sullivan said is now obsolete thanks to computers.
She learned this job at St. Rose College, where she got her bachelor's degree. She also has a two-year degree in computer technology.
After landing on St. John, she immediately went to work at the Lime Inn restaurant as hostess, a job she held for nearly 15 years. From there, she spent the next eight years at Connections mail service's Coral Bay office.
When she's not behind the counter at Keep Me Posted, she spends her rare free time with her sweetheart, George Belcher, better known on St. John as Refrigerator George for his prowess at fixing broken refrigerators.
Keep Me Posted is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.
Call 775-1727.

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