BEAUMONT, Texas -- American Red Cross workers left several Southeast Texas counties after a disgruntled man posted fliers advertising a march and town hall meeting in protest of the agency, authorities said.

Tyler County Sheriff Jessie Wolf said the Chester resident informed authorities before distributing the fliers, which publicized a meeting and march last week in Woodville. Wolf said the unidentified man was upset because he had not received a debit card from the agency.

"The flier said, 'Come voice your opinion about the Red Cross,"' Wolf said, adding that only the man and his wife participated in the march. He said agency workers had handed out about 79 debit cards to Hurricane Rita victims in the area and were scheduled to hand out 400 on the day the office closed in Tyler County.

After seeing the flier, Wolf said Red Cross workers "packed all their stuff that evening and didn't come back. "It scared them and they left," he said in a story in Thursday's editions of The Beaumont Enterprise.

Red Cross spokeswoman Rebecca Fuller said Wednesday that the office was closed as a precaution. "There had been some protests in other communities that were a threat to volunteers," Fuller said. "We heard about protests and decided to close early." The Red Cross announced Oct. 19 that its financial assistance centers in Jefferson, Jasper and Newton counties would close the next day.

Officials instructed people who still needed assistance to call a toll-free number or visit the agency's Baytown location. Wolf said rumors that the fliers referred to the Ku Klux Klan were unfounded. "I wouldn't have let that kind of thing come in here -- no way," Wolf said. "I would have stopped it at the county line."

He said the man's actions had done a disservice to other local citizens by ending the local Red Cross presence. "They did a good service while they were here," Wolf said of the workers.

But Fuller said the volunteers' departure would not affect aid distribution. Closing a "service center never affects a person's ability to receive aid," Fuller said.