Eastex Advocate - News
Looking back on a lifetime
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| Outgoing San Jacinto County Sheriff Lacy Rogers looks at a photo of a former recipient of the Sheriff's Scholarship. After 20 years as sheriff, Rogers was not re-elected, but he isn't going out with regrets. |
By ALEX WUKMAN
It is just days after the election and San Jacinto County Sheriff Lacy Rogers is running late.
“We had to take [Ramiro] Contreras back to Cleveland. He was up here for a custody hearing and we didn’t want anything to happen on the way back,” he says as he walks into his office.
As offices of public officials go, his is one of the more inviting. The décor feels more like that of a model home’s living room than that of the office of the top cop in the county.
On the cream colored couch is an open brief case with a few papers in it; next to the brief case is a copy of Catlin’s Indians. In one corner stands the American Flag; behind it, on the wall, is the seal of San Jacinto County.
In another corner, a framed western painting sits on an end table. The painting depicts a man in a pale hat, brown shirt and vest riding a painted pony, next to a man dressed in a black frock coat and hat riding a black stallion on a seemingly endless prairie. Both of them have badges on their chests.
The title of the painting reads: “The sheriff and the postal inspector.” In front of the painting are two 16-inch carved wooden figures, both in western wear. The figure on the left stands straight and true, the face has a weather-beaten honesty; the eyes, a faraway stare as if searching for a storm on the horizon. His right hand holds a coiled lariat.
The figure on the right is hunched over, the body doubled in on itself like a question mark. Rogers, seated at his desk, points to the figures and says, with a chuckle, “I was given both of those and I like to tell people that the one on the left is the sheriff at the start of his job and the one on the right is the sheriff at the end.”
The walls of Rogers’ office are covered with reminders and memorabilia marking the passage of time over his 25-plus years in law enforcement.
Nestled in between his Master Peace Officer certificate and his TCLEOSE commission is a photo from his early days. There are eight men in the posed black and white photo; all but two of the men are in light-colored uniforms with black ties and light-colored cowboy hats.
The other two are in wide-collared late 1970’s/early 1980’s street clothes. All eight smile back at the camera with an air of youth and invincibility.
Rogers looks at the photo, the good-natured smile he usually wears has left his face.
“He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead,” he says as he points at the faces of his old friends.
He points at a dark-haired man in street clothes, “He was shot.” A smile begins to creep back across his face, “We used to joke and say we were the only two Hispanics in the department. I was a lot darker back then.”
After 20 years as San Jacinto County sheriff, Rogers lost his re-election bid and now, for the first time in over two decades, he is looking at a life that won’t involve working for the county full-time. He knows that habits built from decades of public service won’t be easy to break.
“I’ll still wake up before five every morning. After 20 years of waking up every day at five, it’ll be hard to get out of that routine,” said Rogers, as he shuffles a stack of papers. On top of the stack is a printout of a calendar for the month of January 2009, the month when he hands over the reins of the department to sheriff-elect James Walters.
Since he was elected, Rogers has made it a habit to be in the office every day before 6 a.m., often arriving as early as 5:30.
His work habits, professionalism and his dedication to his staff and the job are some of the things that made him the longest-serving sheriff in county history. His election came at a troubling time for the county, just four years earlier James C. “Humpy” Parker had been the subject of a federal investigation.
Parker’s years are universally acknowledged as having cast a pall over the office of sheriff in San Jacinto County and the notoriety that his actions brought caused a good deal of cynicism even after he was sentenced to prison.
Rogers removes his glasses and sets them on his desk. His eyes look straight ahead and never waiver.
“There had been one sheriff between me and him and that was one of the biggest things that people said when you arrested them was, well you know, about Humpy,” he says. Rogers goes on to say that the years immediately following Parker were “troubling times” for law enforcement in San Jacinto County.
“It took a long time to get people where they don’t even remember who he was,” he says. Part of the willingness to forget is that San Jacinto County and the sheriff’s department have changed so much in the last two decades.
Part of the change that has come to both the county and the department has been from growth. When Rogers was elected, the jail could only hold as many people as a large minivan.
“When I started here we had a 10-capacity jail. We managed to get the jail commission to [allow us to] put 10 more beds in, which made it 20-capacity and it stayed at 20-capacity for quite some time. And then we had the expansion that got it to 54 and now it’s at 144,” he says with a note of pride in his voice.
As the talk turns to what Rogers feels are his other major accomplishments, he pulls a pen out the pocket on his starched white dress shirt.
“My largest accomplishments,” he says, pausing to think, “two major crimes, wait three, one was the Hilzendagger case. A friend of mine was killed in a liquor store up on 190 and we got everyone that was involved and the guy who did the killing was executed in 2000. Probably the only guy who has been executed [from San Jacinto County] in years.”
Rogers rolls the pen in his hand as he says that he feels his second biggest accomplishment as a law enforcement officer was solving “an eight-year old murder that happened up in Oakhurst before I took office and I was able to clear it.”
When he says the name of his third major accomplishment he does so with a sense of finality, “the Murray Burr case.” Murray Burr was the janitor murdered by the Winfrey family. Two members of the Winfrey family have already been found guilty of the crime and another awaits trial for his part.
He re-shuffles the stack of papers and then places them back on the glass top of his desk. The January 2009 calendar still looms from the top; the nearness of the date prompts talk of how he and his staff are preparing for the handover.
“We’re going to have the [Texas] Rangers and the auditors come in and audit all the property rooms, the guns and the stuff, so that when I leave here they know everything’s where it’s at. There are some things that the incoming sheriff has to do and I’m going to try and get with him and explain some of the things that he has to do that he probably hasn’t thought of yet,” said Rogers.
He goes on to say that he expects his final months in office to be fairly quiet.
“I have one more case I need to testify in. I don’t know if I’ll have to go to court over the Hey case and unless we break one of the ones I’ve been working on, that’s it.”
The ‘ones he’s been working on’ are the cold cases that can’t be let go. These staples of detective fiction are kept in desk drawers and pulled out when nights are slow.
For Rogers, there’s one in particular that he can’t let go.
“The Natasha Ashley Clayton case,” says Rogers. “She was burned in her car. It was a party and we know who did it. We had a witness but the witness recanted. That was the major case that really bothered me.”
Even though Rogers has a case he can’t let go of, he has no desire to become another staple of detective fiction: the obsessive retired detective. He chuckles when he describes what he thinks he’ll do after the first of the year.
“I plan on enjoying my family, which I haven’t had time to do. Every time I try to go see my grandchildren play ball in Huntsville, something happens and I don’t get to go,” Rogers said, adding that since his job has kept him busy, he feels he has missed out and that he feels “ like I owe them some.”
He also said that he’s not going to spend all of his time at the lake.
“I’ll still carry a commission. I’m going to be a reserve deputy for the Pct. 4 constable, which is where I started out,” said Rogers.
As the conversation turns from the future to the past, Rogers doesn’t show any bitterness about losing the election. In fact he seems to exude a little bit of happiness.
He acknowledges what other rural Democrats and Republicans acknowledge as costing them the election, an unusually large amount of straight ticket Republican voters.
“It didn’t have to do with people, just that many folks didn’t vote,” he says, searching for the right words to explain why he thinks so many people voted straight ticket. “It had to do with someone who was running for president.”
Rogers goes on to say that even though he lost, he has no regrets or resentment and the community is still supportive.
“I’ve had a lot of phone calls. I’ve had a lot folks that sent me things that were really upset.
“But I told them don’t be upset for me. I feel like someone took that truck off me out there,” he says gesturing to his county vehicle parked outside the window.
“I got a weight off me and I really do [feel like a] huge weight [is] off my shoulders,” he said.
All of his worries have not disappeared with the election though. “My biggest concern is the people who work for me that are close to retirement and trying to make sure that they get to their retirement time,” he says. “I was already at mine. I could have retired before. I have no regrets about the election. I am just so glad that I got to have 20 years of doing this. I don’t know if anyone else will reach that milestone. No one else ever has, not in this county.”
“We had to take [Ramiro] Contreras back to Cleveland. He was up here for a custody hearing and we didn’t want anything to happen on the way back,” he says as he walks into his office.
As offices of public officials go, his is one of the more inviting. The décor feels more like that of a model home’s living room than that of the office of the top cop in the county.
On the cream colored couch is an open brief case with a few papers in it; next to the brief case is a copy of Catlin’s Indians. In one corner stands the American Flag; behind it, on the wall, is the seal of San Jacinto County.
In another corner, a framed western painting sits on an end table. The painting depicts a man in a pale hat, brown shirt and vest riding a painted pony, next to a man dressed in a black frock coat and hat riding a black stallion on a seemingly endless prairie. Both of them have badges on their chests.
The title of the painting reads: “The sheriff and the postal inspector.” In front of the painting are two 16-inch carved wooden figures, both in western wear. The figure on the left stands straight and true, the face has a weather-beaten honesty; the eyes, a faraway stare as if searching for a storm on the horizon. His right hand holds a coiled lariat.
The figure on the right is hunched over, the body doubled in on itself like a question mark. Rogers, seated at his desk, points to the figures and says, with a chuckle, “I was given both of those and I like to tell people that the one on the left is the sheriff at the start of his job and the one on the right is the sheriff at the end.”
The walls of Rogers’ office are covered with reminders and memorabilia marking the passage of time over his 25-plus years in law enforcement.
Nestled in between his Master Peace Officer certificate and his TCLEOSE commission is a photo from his early days. There are eight men in the posed black and white photo; all but two of the men are in light-colored uniforms with black ties and light-colored cowboy hats.
The other two are in wide-collared late 1970’s/early 1980’s street clothes. All eight smile back at the camera with an air of youth and invincibility.
Rogers looks at the photo, the good-natured smile he usually wears has left his face.
“He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead,” he says as he points at the faces of his old friends.
He points at a dark-haired man in street clothes, “He was shot.” A smile begins to creep back across his face, “We used to joke and say we were the only two Hispanics in the department. I was a lot darker back then.”
After 20 years as San Jacinto County sheriff, Rogers lost his re-election bid and now, for the first time in over two decades, he is looking at a life that won’t involve working for the county full-time. He knows that habits built from decades of public service won’t be easy to break.
“I’ll still wake up before five every morning. After 20 years of waking up every day at five, it’ll be hard to get out of that routine,” said Rogers, as he shuffles a stack of papers. On top of the stack is a printout of a calendar for the month of January 2009, the month when he hands over the reins of the department to sheriff-elect James Walters.
Since he was elected, Rogers has made it a habit to be in the office every day before 6 a.m., often arriving as early as 5:30.
His work habits, professionalism and his dedication to his staff and the job are some of the things that made him the longest-serving sheriff in county history. His election came at a troubling time for the county, just four years earlier James C. “Humpy” Parker had been the subject of a federal investigation.
Parker’s years are universally acknowledged as having cast a pall over the office of sheriff in San Jacinto County and the notoriety that his actions brought caused a good deal of cynicism even after he was sentenced to prison.
Rogers removes his glasses and sets them on his desk. His eyes look straight ahead and never waiver.
“There had been one sheriff between me and him and that was one of the biggest things that people said when you arrested them was, well you know, about Humpy,” he says. Rogers goes on to say that the years immediately following Parker were “troubling times” for law enforcement in San Jacinto County.
“It took a long time to get people where they don’t even remember who he was,” he says. Part of the willingness to forget is that San Jacinto County and the sheriff’s department have changed so much in the last two decades.
Part of the change that has come to both the county and the department has been from growth. When Rogers was elected, the jail could only hold as many people as a large minivan.
“When I started here we had a 10-capacity jail. We managed to get the jail commission to [allow us to] put 10 more beds in, which made it 20-capacity and it stayed at 20-capacity for quite some time. And then we had the expansion that got it to 54 and now it’s at 144,” he says with a note of pride in his voice.
As the talk turns to what Rogers feels are his other major accomplishments, he pulls a pen out the pocket on his starched white dress shirt.
“My largest accomplishments,” he says, pausing to think, “two major crimes, wait three, one was the Hilzendagger case. A friend of mine was killed in a liquor store up on 190 and we got everyone that was involved and the guy who did the killing was executed in 2000. Probably the only guy who has been executed [from San Jacinto County] in years.”
Rogers rolls the pen in his hand as he says that he feels his second biggest accomplishment as a law enforcement officer was solving “an eight-year old murder that happened up in Oakhurst before I took office and I was able to clear it.”
When he says the name of his third major accomplishment he does so with a sense of finality, “the Murray Burr case.” Murray Burr was the janitor murdered by the Winfrey family. Two members of the Winfrey family have already been found guilty of the crime and another awaits trial for his part.
He re-shuffles the stack of papers and then places them back on the glass top of his desk. The January 2009 calendar still looms from the top; the nearness of the date prompts talk of how he and his staff are preparing for the handover.
“We’re going to have the [Texas] Rangers and the auditors come in and audit all the property rooms, the guns and the stuff, so that when I leave here they know everything’s where it’s at. There are some things that the incoming sheriff has to do and I’m going to try and get with him and explain some of the things that he has to do that he probably hasn’t thought of yet,” said Rogers.
He goes on to say that he expects his final months in office to be fairly quiet.
“I have one more case I need to testify in. I don’t know if I’ll have to go to court over the Hey case and unless we break one of the ones I’ve been working on, that’s it.”
The ‘ones he’s been working on’ are the cold cases that can’t be let go. These staples of detective fiction are kept in desk drawers and pulled out when nights are slow.
For Rogers, there’s one in particular that he can’t let go.
“The Natasha Ashley Clayton case,” says Rogers. “She was burned in her car. It was a party and we know who did it. We had a witness but the witness recanted. That was the major case that really bothered me.”
Even though Rogers has a case he can’t let go of, he has no desire to become another staple of detective fiction: the obsessive retired detective. He chuckles when he describes what he thinks he’ll do after the first of the year.
“I plan on enjoying my family, which I haven’t had time to do. Every time I try to go see my grandchildren play ball in Huntsville, something happens and I don’t get to go,” Rogers said, adding that since his job has kept him busy, he feels he has missed out and that he feels “ like I owe them some.”
He also said that he’s not going to spend all of his time at the lake.
“I’ll still carry a commission. I’m going to be a reserve deputy for the Pct. 4 constable, which is where I started out,” said Rogers.
As the conversation turns from the future to the past, Rogers doesn’t show any bitterness about losing the election. In fact he seems to exude a little bit of happiness.
He acknowledges what other rural Democrats and Republicans acknowledge as costing them the election, an unusually large amount of straight ticket Republican voters.
“It didn’t have to do with people, just that many folks didn’t vote,” he says, searching for the right words to explain why he thinks so many people voted straight ticket. “It had to do with someone who was running for president.”
Rogers goes on to say that even though he lost, he has no regrets or resentment and the community is still supportive.
“I’ve had a lot of phone calls. I’ve had a lot folks that sent me things that were really upset.
“But I told them don’t be upset for me. I feel like someone took that truck off me out there,” he says gesturing to his county vehicle parked outside the window.
“I got a weight off me and I really do [feel like a] huge weight [is] off my shoulders,” he said.
All of his worries have not disappeared with the election though. “My biggest concern is the people who work for me that are close to retirement and trying to make sure that they get to their retirement time,” he says. “I was already at mine. I could have retired before. I have no regrets about the election. I am just so glad that I got to have 20 years of doing this. I don’t know if anyone else will reach that milestone. No one else ever has, not in this county.”
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