CARL SULLENBERGER

The line for last-minute tax filers stretched out of the inside lobby at the Elyria post office on Tuesday evening.

ELYRIA — The clock struck 9 p.m. Tuesday, and they continued to come in droves.

With envelopes in hand, panic-faced people pushed into the Elyria post office on East Bridge Street and found they weren’t too late to get tax returns post-marked by April 15 — D-day for tax filers.

They could breath easy.

“I knew it was going to be busy,” Elyria resident Melissa Turner said, with 45 minutes till closing time. “But here I am. We were just running late this year.”

Another man dropped off his tax return, pumped his fist in the air and shouted, “Hallelujah!” as he jogged out the door.

Meanwhile, inside the lobby, Ricky Hogan of LaGrange was sealing his envelope and dropping it in the mail slot.

“It’s my very first one, and it’s my 17th birthday,” he said. “And I’m here, mailing my taxes.”

Behind the scenes, postal workers were scrambling to hand-stamp envelopes to speed up the process.

Acting Postmaster Kathleen Yun said that between 6 and 8 p.m., more than 2,000 tax returns were dropped off, and she expected to hit the 5,000 mark by closing time at 10 p.m.

Those who missed the deadline in Elyria still had a glimmer of hope — the Lorain post ffice was open until midnight.

All of those returns had to be loaded onto trucks and carried to the central Cleveland mail processing plant, which was on track to handle 1.5 million returns Tuesday night.

“You never know what to expect at the post office on tax day,” Yun said. “You always prepare for the unexpected.”

Contact Jason Hawk at 329-7148 or jhawk@chroniclet.com.

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