Your Blend file is empty, i believe you have linked those characters. Make sure that you put all the linked character and working blend file to zip file then we can investigate more your problem 
Sorry about that. Here is a link to the zip with both files. I couldn’t get the original file small enough to upload here, so it’s in google drive.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QSiYk5BMtSlzkHTa2xqKqU5sPLd6ByTu/view?usp=sharing
The answer to your problem is here https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2462/difference-between-make-local-object-and-make-proxy
However i m having hard time to reproduce the snapping problem.
It will help me to help you if i knew how did you end up in this situation, did you make a proxy or a local? what action did you try to add? May be if i understand how i can help you to avoid this problem in the future???
Sure, thanks for taking the time to help. After creating the animation file (Mailbot_anim.blend), I linked a group containing the character mesh objects and a group containing the armature. I then made a proxy from the armature so that I could post and animate it, and left the mesh object as is. I did not make any objects local. Adding actions to the armature was working as expected. The snapping only occurred after adding an action to the other object in the scene (the box). The box was animated to be caught by the bot character, which all went well, but at some point while arranging things in the NLA editor and/or the action editor, the rig snapped to the origin of the box. Deleting the box altogether didn’t fix the issue, nor did linking the character and rig over again. The problem lies in the ‘Root’ bone of the rig, because all other bones are behaving correctly. The animation runs fine, it just starts from the origin of the box object instead of the center as it is keyframed to do. The root bone is not parented or constrained to anything as far as I can tell.
You said you’re having a hard time reproducing the issue. Was the rig not snapped to the other object when you opened the file?
Yes, The rig was snapped there at the package group but when i remove the box and tried to redo the snap i m failing
To make the animation to run from the center where is the cursor is do this:
- Select the armature
- Go to object mode
- shift+s -> selection to cursor
- Play your animation
Since the cursor is still in the center your model should snap there.
Oh wow I feel so stupid. This whole time I assumed the issue was with the root bone when in fact it was just the whole armature object itself. I had been in pose mode so long I didn’t even think to clear the location in object mode! Thank you for making me realize the issue. I must have snapped the armature object there at some point without noticing, so I wouldn’t bother trying to reproduce it. Thanks again!
Glad that i did help