We drove west to Marfa before hooking southwest through the Chinati Mountains. About three hours later, the agents moved in to inspect the trailer, parked with the sheriffs other equipment. Silvino could only muster twenty-fifth place. But help never came, and speaking out became risky. Handsome, well-educated, but deeply troubled: Robert Chambers was a total knockout with a dark personality. Two weeks earlier. When I visited Chambers at his office in January, his desk was makeshift: two long folding tables down the hall from a few other lawyers in a one-story brick building on the main street. Then again, he spent much of his life severed from them. But Thompson, with brains, nerve and political savvy, proved up to the all-consuming job of being a rural West Texas sheriff. Silvino felt the pressure of what hed come to donot just for his own survival but for the survival of his people. This case was filed in Travis County Courts, Heman Marion Sweatt Travis County Courthouse located in Travis, Texas. Almost like brothers, one observer said. It was cool now, but the temperature would climb into the 70s. A landmark in Marfa, the old Presidio County Courthouse housed Rick Thompsons tax assessors office. Silvino remembered the women in Huisuchi who used to weave baskets out of the pine needles. Chambers nodded. Thompson became sheriff in May 1973 after Sheriff Hank Hamilton was shot to death. That same summer, Silvino landed a job as a manager for a chia cultivation project for 400 pesos (about $20) a day. Rick Thompson was widely admired by Marfa residents and was a shoe-in for his upcoming election to a fifth term as Presidio County Sheriff. A few years earlier, the Sinaloa and Jurez cartels had begun escalating their fight for control of billion-dollar fields of marijuana and poppy in the so-called Golden Triangle, where the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and Durango converge in the Sierra. Mounds of melon-size rocks blanketed every grave. Chambers thought about how Vega wouldnt be there for his two sons as they grew into their teens. $10.00 + $4.99 shipping . In the years ahead, she cycled in and out of prison for similar charges. Nobody was warming up when he arrived; the Tarahumara dont stretch. Thompson was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole, but a change in sentencing guidelines led to his eventual release in April of 2018. This was the most common drug crossing in her cases, she said. It was cool now, but the temperature would climb into the 70s. At that time Manny told us this guy is involved in the drug business but we didnt believe it, he said. It seemed that everyone profited except the Tarahumara. Rick Thompson, former Presidio County sheriff, and rancher Glyn Robert Chambers received life terms from U.S. District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer of Dallas for shipping the cocaine across the Rio Grande River on Dec. 3, 1991. It turned out to be people burning salt cedar, an invasive species that saps water from the earth. He was conditioned to navigating switchbacks. Candelaria was well on its way to becoming a ghost town. Robert Chambers grew up on the border in south Presidio County, where his mother taught in a small school in Candelaria. Stinson, now 74, lives in Colorado and is writing about his experiences. In 1977, on a highway south of Marfa, Presidio County Sheriff Rick Thompson, far right, posed for Texas Monthly with his crew (left to right) Jailer Robert Guevara, Deputy Gary Painter, and Deputy Roger Brito. 118 Oak Shadows Cv Hawkins, TX 75765 2324 Saddlebrook Ln Rockwall, TX 75087 1651 Airport Rd Rockwall, TX 75087 460 County Road 2375 Saltillo, TX 75478. A pair of federal police trucks rolled through with machine gunners standing in the bed, black scarves covering the bottom half of their faces. Then the judge asked Vega if he had anything to add. And when cocaine starts flowing across the Mexican border like never before, Robert dives in headfirst. Many of these were caught and processed as so-called backpacker cases: groups of six or more Mexican men arrested in the mountains, each carrying about 45 pounds of marijuana. As Silvino continued to ascend, the only sounds were the buzz of white-eared hummingbirds and the musical trills of canyon and rock wrens. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate, Former Presidio County Sheriff Rick Thompson. Now 73, he lives in Midland, Texas with his wife, and remains close to his two sons and daughter. No one, even back then, would have trusted someone with that quantity of drugs, unless they had a reliable track record. ), he added. The head of the organization squeals on people who worked for him, and the DEA gives him a free pass. Theyd reach it before daybreak. And, he said, it is often misunderstood: Thompson never was the primary figure in the investigation of a 10-year drug conspiracy. While working a job canning chiles, they were told they could earn twice as much at a pecan orchard near the Rio Grande. Still, of the dozens and dozens of clients hed defended, it was Vega, and the plight of the Tarahumara, that stuck with him. View Robert I Chambers results in Texas (TX) including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. Currently, he is at the Sullivan Correctional Facility, where fellow inmates include the infamous Ronald DeFeo Jr., whose crimes are the basis of ' The Amityville Horror '. In the years ahead, she cycled in and out of prison for similar charges. During the race, the slower runners tended to set the early pace, while the closers bided their time. A day before the race, however, Jurez hit men stormed the police station, seizing two officers and a teenager, and American organizers called off the race. He zigzagged around scrawny desert saplings, while the shadows cast by the dirt bikes spotlight darted around him. Robert Chambers - Football Official - Texas Association of Sports Officials | LinkedIn Robert Chambers Environmental Engineer at Austin White Lime Company Austin, Texas, United States 735. James Medford Chambers went home to be with The LORD on Saturday, January 7, 2023, at the age of 92. Chambers told Vega that it was a good deal, and it helped when the Federal Bureau of Prisons sent back a recommendation of 46 months instead of 60. Vega didnt know the men whod recruited him, which is typical in backpacker cases, so they didnt have any information to offer prosecutors in exchange for a shorter sentence. I couldnt accept the fact that a man I had worked with and trusted for the last five years could possibly be involved in drugs. Theyre some of the toughest people in the world.. Muy ligero, he told himself. Many Tarahumara were forced to grow these crops, their wages docked and their land stolen. Chambers remembers law enforcement coming to his house after his father had been arrested, though he was too young to comprehend the reason. 2 . Vega, it turned out, was a Tarahumara. It just shattered people. And so when Micah True hosted the second Caballo Blanco, Silvino couldnt make the race; he was sitting in a New Mexico prison. Silvino wore athletic gear and blue-and-yellow Asicsthe trails were too slippery, the roads too hard, for huaraches. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents left him in Jurez without enough money for a bus ticket home. When the Norwegian explorer Carl Lumholtz stopped at the edge of one of these canyons, Urique, in the late nineteenth century, he couldnt imagine anyone living below. He also enlisted the two best Tarahumara runners: Silvino, who was 28 at the time, and his younger cousin Arnulfo Quimare Qui. The smell of charcoal-grilled chicken filled the air. Thompson helped with two shipments of marijuana in November 1991. His teammates became ill; hed been the only one not stricken. Runners would have to reach the plaza, grab another bracelet, and then double back to the edge of town before returning. The Chambers' gift creates the J. Robert Chambers '89 and Kimberly A. More than five hundred Tarahumara, Silvino included, resolved to carry on anyway, and the mayor agreed to a version that cut out the downriver loop, where the major shoot-out had occurred. He also made a cryptic remark that wounded every law enforcement agent in the Big Bend. He would share his produce with family, friends, and neighbors, a true labor of love. After drug traffickers had taken over the ejido in Basihuare, Makawi had given an interview to a newspaper in Chihuahua, describing the situation and the growing recruitment of Tarahumara youth into organized crime. Thats whats hard to understand, he added. They discovered what they believed to be a large load of cocaine covered by several bales of hay and empty feed sacks, Stinson testified. While the podcast features numerous sources, here are a few of the main players in the story. They trudged silently past the scars of an old copper mining trail, long-gone railroad tracks and trading posts that once upon a time exchanged men, minerals, and equipment across the border to Chihuahua. In August 2016, Chvez had decried the work of the cartels in downtown Chihuahua on the International Day of the Worlds Indigenous Peoples before a crowd of several thousand. far west texas when austin-based journalist rob d'amico started calling west texans in 2017, asking what they knew about robert chambers, rick thompson and the 1991 billion dollar bust of a cocaine-filled horse trailer in presidio county, many "quite frankly said, 'this is done, you don't need to dredge it up,'" d'amico said in an interview Even still, looking at the slight, dark-haired, shackled Vega, his anger bubbled up. The squat white, Thirty minutes later, the second finisher arrived, and Silvino three minutes after him. PWW(defunct) Final roster, Michael Avalon, Michael Berlot, Damon Black, Blitzschlag, Vanessa von . Jackson was a regular, and he later devoted most of a chapter in his book One Ranger to a tortured examination of their relationship. He laughed at the memory of a. Standing well over 6 feet, before putting on his hat and boots, he cut an imposing, even intimidating figure. Youre strong and you know the way, they pleaded. Silvino, with his farmland afflicted by unrelenting drought, was one of the desperate ones, so he signed on to tote drugs. Urique had an anthropomorphic quality from here: the peaks on either side of the river looked like heads, with an evergreen blanket sloped across their chests and legs. He crossed the finish line, accepted a sandwich, sat on a stone wall, and barely stirred for photographs with local officials. Looking back, former DEA agent Stinson said the Marfa drug case neither was the biggest nor most interesting of his career. Thompson in a portrait with his jail staff. There, it also became common to see Tarahumara children begging or selling candy and key chains on the streets. A Presidio County native, Ponton dabbled in film in his early days and worked on the crew of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Makawi had also met with the wives of those who, like Sebastian Vega, were in prison in the U.S. Word was spreading that the sicarios wanted to eliminate the two. Competitors from all over the world, electrified by Born to Run, made the pilgrimage to the Tarahumara homeland. Silvino wore athletic gear and blue-and-yellow Asicsthe trails were too slippery, the roads too hard, for huaraches. He messed up one time. See the links below for more info. They moved up and down the Interstate 35 corridor so often that Chambers lost count of the number of schools he attended. People say that because I worked for Rick Thompson, I was dirty. 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