BudreauReye
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Saw this article,about Rick McIvor, entitled "Former UT star now quarterbacks a small town sheriff's department", by Roy Bragg, in the San Antonio Express-News, reprinted in the Austin American Statesman. Some time ago, somebody asked about Rick. I knew that the Statesman had had an article about him, but it had subsequently been removed from the archives. I found another article about Rick in a newspaper from Odessa, I think. It has been a while, and today I saw this in the Austin American Statesman. So, I thought I would put it here for those who might have wondered about him, where he was and what he was doing. His story seems that it would be a pretty good starting point for a TV series ... just saying ... An ex college quarterback for the Longhorns who went on to play two years in the NFL, and later went home to become combined Sheriff, Tax Assessor-Collector, dog catcher, and volunteer football coach set against the backdrop of the grandeur of the Davis Mountains. Hmmmm! Seems to me that this is the kind of story that some TV producers might just eat up. Also might just be a good way to get the Longhorn brand front and central of national TV screens. Hmmmm!
Former UT star now quarterbacks a small town sheriff's department
By Roy Bragg
June 24, 2014 | Updated: June 24, 2014 11:06pm
http://www.expressnews.com/sports/college_sports/longhorns/article/Former-UT-star-now-quarterbacks-a-small-town-5576500.php#/1
"VALENTINE — Rick McIvor steered his patrol vehicle — a Ford F-350, emblazoned with the Jeff Davis County seal and 'Sheriff' below that — along U.S. 90, passing empty stores in this desolate and distant West Texas community.
A car approached. McIvor noticed something amiss. He slowed the truck and turned it around. He flipped on the red-and-blue lights and began a slow-speed pursuit.
' I'm pulling them over because that car was driving through town, then it began to flash its lights,†McIvor said. 'That's kind of suspicious. I know they're not from here. I don't recognize them.'
McIvor veered the truck onto the shoulder. Thirty feet in front of McIvor's truck, a dilapidated, late model midsize car did the same.
If the sheriff's name sounds familiar, you're probably a football fan from the late 1970s and early 1980s, when McIvor, a highly sought prospect out of neighboring Fort Stockton High School, was the on-and-off quarterback at the University of Texas.
Born and bred in the Davis Mountains region, with the blood of two prominent ranch families in him, McIvor bears the distinction of having occupied two of the most rewarding-yet-pressure-filled positions in the state — starting quarterback for the Texas Longhorns and high sheriff in the modern-day badlands of West Texas.
There are similarities between the jobs. When things are going well, the quarterback and the sheriff are everyone's heroes. But when things go bad, the quarterback is second-guessed, booed and blamed. The second-teamer becomes everyone's de facto savior.
If the sheriff makes someone mad, someone complains to the local paper or commissioner's court. At a certain point, a disgruntled constituent decides to run against the sheriff in the next election.
Caution needed
Back on the roadside, the good-natured McIvor got serious. Traffic stops always have the potential of going bad, and that's especially true out here. He radioed the dispatcher of the stop and, with his gun holster unbuckled, moseyed up to the driver's-side window.
Clad in blue jeans, a green-and-white Fort Davis High polo, casual athletic shoes, a camouflage green vest and sporting a burnt orange-and-white UT cap, McIvor doesn't fit the image of a small county sheriff at first glance.
After introducing himself, McIvor, 6-feet-4 of West Texas peacekeeping, looked around and surveyed the scene before him, in the same way a quarterback studies the defense when he comes to the line of scrimmage.
This part of the state is empty and can sometimes be dangerous. McIvor and his three deputies, along with legions of state and federal authorities, have chased human traffickers and drug mules through the mountains and across this edge of the Chihuahuan Desert.
At 2,265 square miles, Jeff Davis is small for a West Texas county, but it sits amid the most rugged land in the state.
As sheriff for a county with fewer than 2,342 residents, McIvor toes the line between professional law officer and pragmatist. He doesn't wear the de rigueur white Stetson, but he sports plenty of other hats. Besides being the county's top law enforcement officer and its duly-elected tax assessor-collector — a dubious perk of being in a remote county with a small population — he's the unofficial animal control officer.
He also coaches middle school sports teams, and tends to the grass and sprinklers on the county's two high school fields.
Clues to other jobs can be found in the pickup bed: A large metallic tube that functions as a pipe wrench, used to turn off ranchland sprinklers. A pair of racks used to move dirt when he stumbles onto small fires. A stretch of stiff rope, used to lasso stray livestock.
McIvor says he was growing up he had no interest in the job he now holds.
He was an athlete from an extended family — the Espys and the McIvors — that owned hundreds of square miles of ranch land.
Born and raised in Fort Davis, he reluctantly transferred to Fort Stockton — where his mom was the girls sports coach — before his freshman year in high school because the Fort Davis Indians didn't play 11-man football.
He was good at what he did and colleges around the country noticed, including Texas Tech, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. The recruiting process was over when he set foot on the UT campus in Austin.
McIvor threw for 2,433 yards and 15 TDs in college, sharing snaps with a cast of Longhorn quarterbacks that included Todd Dodge, Jon Aune, Robert Brewer, Donnie Little, and Rob Moerschell.
McIvor's finest moment might have been in his redshirt-senior year when, coming off the bench he had been riding for all of the 1983 season, he threw for four touchdowns to allow UT to rally and beat Texas A&M 45-13.
No living in past
Though his office and home are filled with UT memorabilia, and while McIvor remains close to the program, that was his old life. These days, he doesn't spit out anecdotes for attention.
'I had fun,' he says. 'It was a lot of fun the way (head coach) Fred (Akers) handled it.'
Playing football had its moments. The victory over Texas A&M was one. So was the response he got from a particularly gruesome beating at the hands of the University of Houston: two shoeboxes of hate mail from Longhorn fans.
Using its third-round selection, St. Louis drafted McIvor with the 80th pick in the 1984 NFL draft. He became a backup to Cardinals quarterback Neil Lomax. He stuck around for two seasons, leaving before the 1986 season.
Here's the only time when the typically upbeat McIvor sounds unhappy.
'I didn't want to be 'a number,' ' he says, explaining his departure from the team. 'I wanted to play football. If I couldn't, I didn't want to stick around.'
He returned to West Texas and become wildlife manager at the 06, a historic ranch headquartered in neighboring Brewster County and best known today for cattle operations and trophy hunting.
McIvor became a jack-of-all-trades, operating equipment, dealing with customers, protecting ranch assets and making impromptu decisions. He took law enforcement classes to help him deal with emergencies.
During that time, he married LaShawn Wardlow. They have two teenage children.
Work on the ranch was good, but events took McIvor in a different direction in 2007.
'Harvey Adams (former Jeff Davis County sheriff) came to me and asked me to consider running for sheriff,' McIvor said. The local political landscape, McIvor noted, mandated that he run as a Democrat in order to be successful.
And he was, surviving the primary and winning the general election with 71 percent of the vote. He was re-elected in 2012 with 80 percent of the vote.
'He's really a super nice guy,' retired real estate agent Fran Glaze said. 'He's the kind of sheriff everybody would like to have in a small town. This is a hometown boy who doesn't use his office to bully anyone. He'll do whatever it takes to help. He volunteers for the ambulance service, too.'
'He's a wonderful guy' said Rita Weigart of Valentine. 'Everybody knows Rick. He's a pillar of the community. Those Fort Davis kids are lucky to have him.'
Case in point: McIvor drove down to Valentine on this day, a 41-mile drive from Fort Davis, because he had told a school organization that he would donate $10 to a fund drive. When he showed up at Weigart's home, he gave her $20 out his own pocket.
'That's the kind of guy he is,' Weigart said.
And it goes beyond being nice.
“I'm a volunteer firefighter here in Valentine,' Weigart said. 'And every time we're called out on a fire, he's right there in the thick of things. He's right there, helping us put out the fire.'
When given the chance, the community helps him as well.
McIvor was on patrol by himself two years ago when he suffered a heart attack, Weigart said.
'Thankfully,' she says, 'there were some ranchers nearby who saw him and were able to get him help.'
After heart surgery, he had to give up some vices. These days, he dips tobacco-free snuff.
Stretching dollars
The Sheriff's Department needs help, too. With an annual operating budget of about $128,000, McIvor's office relies on federal and state grants to help pay for the high- tech equipment required to augment his tiny department.
There are CCTV cameras all over Fort Davis, as well as solar-powered spy cameras placed throughout the county, aimed at notorious smuggling corridors. He can monitor it all from his office and with his iPhone.
Money limitations have made McIvor inventive. He can't get grants or county money for more officers, so he schedules his entire crew for overlapping 12 hour shifts, paying them overtime out of grant money, which is allowed.
The scarcity of officers is why he couldn't find any backup for the Valentine car stop. That's also why McIvor had his Ruger .45 ready to pull as he approached the car.
The driver explained in Spanish that he and his cousin had just purchased four used cars from an uncle in Marathon, a tourist and ranching town about 90 miles to the east.
They explained to McIvor that they used the two working cars to tow the two crippled vehicles. The car towed by the first driver had to be left in Marfa because the tow bar broke. He was flashing his headlights to signal his cousin, towing a car a half-mile ahead, of this fact.
McIvor and the first driver drove up to the cousin, who had stopped.
Neither driver had phones. Neither had driver's licenses. Thankfully for them, each had a permanent resident's identity card.
McIvor radioed his office and worked his cell phone for a few minutes. His preference was to cite them for driving without a license, but then the reality of West Texas kicked in.
If he did that, he'd have to get four vehicles towed and drive the two guys to the Marfa jail. That would take him out of operation for hours. In a cash-strapped, understaffed department, the public good would've taken the hit.
After talking it over with the two drivers, McIvor helped them move the contents of the first driver's car to the second driver's car. He let them drive off. Two cars remained behind on U.S. 90.
'They said they were going to El Paso,†McIvor explained. “I told them to get a licensed driver, come back here and get this car and the one in Marfa. And I told them to call me, on my cell phone or at dispatch, when they came through. Then one of us would check on the license and then they could tow the cars.'
On the drive back to Fort Davis, McIvor's phone rang. Without getting into specifics, McIvor browbeat the caller for partying too much. There was neither legal action nor any official charge. McIvor, who had known the young man since he was a little boy, read the guy the riot act.
Said McIvor: 'That's how we do things out here.' "
Former UT star now quarterbacks a small town sheriff's department
By Roy Bragg
June 24, 2014 | Updated: June 24, 2014 11:06pm
http://www.expressnews.com/sports/college_sports/longhorns/article/Former-UT-star-now-quarterbacks-a-small-town-5576500.php#/1
"VALENTINE — Rick McIvor steered his patrol vehicle — a Ford F-350, emblazoned with the Jeff Davis County seal and 'Sheriff' below that — along U.S. 90, passing empty stores in this desolate and distant West Texas community.
A car approached. McIvor noticed something amiss. He slowed the truck and turned it around. He flipped on the red-and-blue lights and began a slow-speed pursuit.
' I'm pulling them over because that car was driving through town, then it began to flash its lights,†McIvor said. 'That's kind of suspicious. I know they're not from here. I don't recognize them.'
McIvor veered the truck onto the shoulder. Thirty feet in front of McIvor's truck, a dilapidated, late model midsize car did the same.
If the sheriff's name sounds familiar, you're probably a football fan from the late 1970s and early 1980s, when McIvor, a highly sought prospect out of neighboring Fort Stockton High School, was the on-and-off quarterback at the University of Texas.
Born and bred in the Davis Mountains region, with the blood of two prominent ranch families in him, McIvor bears the distinction of having occupied two of the most rewarding-yet-pressure-filled positions in the state — starting quarterback for the Texas Longhorns and high sheriff in the modern-day badlands of West Texas.
There are similarities between the jobs. When things are going well, the quarterback and the sheriff are everyone's heroes. But when things go bad, the quarterback is second-guessed, booed and blamed. The second-teamer becomes everyone's de facto savior.
If the sheriff makes someone mad, someone complains to the local paper or commissioner's court. At a certain point, a disgruntled constituent decides to run against the sheriff in the next election.
Caution needed
Back on the roadside, the good-natured McIvor got serious. Traffic stops always have the potential of going bad, and that's especially true out here. He radioed the dispatcher of the stop and, with his gun holster unbuckled, moseyed up to the driver's-side window.
Clad in blue jeans, a green-and-white Fort Davis High polo, casual athletic shoes, a camouflage green vest and sporting a burnt orange-and-white UT cap, McIvor doesn't fit the image of a small county sheriff at first glance.
After introducing himself, McIvor, 6-feet-4 of West Texas peacekeeping, looked around and surveyed the scene before him, in the same way a quarterback studies the defense when he comes to the line of scrimmage.
This part of the state is empty and can sometimes be dangerous. McIvor and his three deputies, along with legions of state and federal authorities, have chased human traffickers and drug mules through the mountains and across this edge of the Chihuahuan Desert.
At 2,265 square miles, Jeff Davis is small for a West Texas county, but it sits amid the most rugged land in the state.
As sheriff for a county with fewer than 2,342 residents, McIvor toes the line between professional law officer and pragmatist. He doesn't wear the de rigueur white Stetson, but he sports plenty of other hats. Besides being the county's top law enforcement officer and its duly-elected tax assessor-collector — a dubious perk of being in a remote county with a small population — he's the unofficial animal control officer.
He also coaches middle school sports teams, and tends to the grass and sprinklers on the county's two high school fields.
Clues to other jobs can be found in the pickup bed: A large metallic tube that functions as a pipe wrench, used to turn off ranchland sprinklers. A pair of racks used to move dirt when he stumbles onto small fires. A stretch of stiff rope, used to lasso stray livestock.
McIvor says he was growing up he had no interest in the job he now holds.
He was an athlete from an extended family — the Espys and the McIvors — that owned hundreds of square miles of ranch land.
Born and raised in Fort Davis, he reluctantly transferred to Fort Stockton — where his mom was the girls sports coach — before his freshman year in high school because the Fort Davis Indians didn't play 11-man football.
He was good at what he did and colleges around the country noticed, including Texas Tech, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. The recruiting process was over when he set foot on the UT campus in Austin.
McIvor threw for 2,433 yards and 15 TDs in college, sharing snaps with a cast of Longhorn quarterbacks that included Todd Dodge, Jon Aune, Robert Brewer, Donnie Little, and Rob Moerschell.
McIvor's finest moment might have been in his redshirt-senior year when, coming off the bench he had been riding for all of the 1983 season, he threw for four touchdowns to allow UT to rally and beat Texas A&M 45-13.
No living in past
Though his office and home are filled with UT memorabilia, and while McIvor remains close to the program, that was his old life. These days, he doesn't spit out anecdotes for attention.
'I had fun,' he says. 'It was a lot of fun the way (head coach) Fred (Akers) handled it.'
Playing football had its moments. The victory over Texas A&M was one. So was the response he got from a particularly gruesome beating at the hands of the University of Houston: two shoeboxes of hate mail from Longhorn fans.
Using its third-round selection, St. Louis drafted McIvor with the 80th pick in the 1984 NFL draft. He became a backup to Cardinals quarterback Neil Lomax. He stuck around for two seasons, leaving before the 1986 season.
Here's the only time when the typically upbeat McIvor sounds unhappy.
'I didn't want to be 'a number,' ' he says, explaining his departure from the team. 'I wanted to play football. If I couldn't, I didn't want to stick around.'
He returned to West Texas and become wildlife manager at the 06, a historic ranch headquartered in neighboring Brewster County and best known today for cattle operations and trophy hunting.
McIvor became a jack-of-all-trades, operating equipment, dealing with customers, protecting ranch assets and making impromptu decisions. He took law enforcement classes to help him deal with emergencies.
During that time, he married LaShawn Wardlow. They have two teenage children.
Work on the ranch was good, but events took McIvor in a different direction in 2007.
'Harvey Adams (former Jeff Davis County sheriff) came to me and asked me to consider running for sheriff,' McIvor said. The local political landscape, McIvor noted, mandated that he run as a Democrat in order to be successful.
And he was, surviving the primary and winning the general election with 71 percent of the vote. He was re-elected in 2012 with 80 percent of the vote.
'He's really a super nice guy,' retired real estate agent Fran Glaze said. 'He's the kind of sheriff everybody would like to have in a small town. This is a hometown boy who doesn't use his office to bully anyone. He'll do whatever it takes to help. He volunteers for the ambulance service, too.'
'He's a wonderful guy' said Rita Weigart of Valentine. 'Everybody knows Rick. He's a pillar of the community. Those Fort Davis kids are lucky to have him.'
Case in point: McIvor drove down to Valentine on this day, a 41-mile drive from Fort Davis, because he had told a school organization that he would donate $10 to a fund drive. When he showed up at Weigart's home, he gave her $20 out his own pocket.
'That's the kind of guy he is,' Weigart said.
And it goes beyond being nice.
“I'm a volunteer firefighter here in Valentine,' Weigart said. 'And every time we're called out on a fire, he's right there in the thick of things. He's right there, helping us put out the fire.'
When given the chance, the community helps him as well.
McIvor was on patrol by himself two years ago when he suffered a heart attack, Weigart said.
'Thankfully,' she says, 'there were some ranchers nearby who saw him and were able to get him help.'
After heart surgery, he had to give up some vices. These days, he dips tobacco-free snuff.
Stretching dollars
The Sheriff's Department needs help, too. With an annual operating budget of about $128,000, McIvor's office relies on federal and state grants to help pay for the high- tech equipment required to augment his tiny department.
There are CCTV cameras all over Fort Davis, as well as solar-powered spy cameras placed throughout the county, aimed at notorious smuggling corridors. He can monitor it all from his office and with his iPhone.
Money limitations have made McIvor inventive. He can't get grants or county money for more officers, so he schedules his entire crew for overlapping 12 hour shifts, paying them overtime out of grant money, which is allowed.
The scarcity of officers is why he couldn't find any backup for the Valentine car stop. That's also why McIvor had his Ruger .45 ready to pull as he approached the car.
The driver explained in Spanish that he and his cousin had just purchased four used cars from an uncle in Marathon, a tourist and ranching town about 90 miles to the east.
They explained to McIvor that they used the two working cars to tow the two crippled vehicles. The car towed by the first driver had to be left in Marfa because the tow bar broke. He was flashing his headlights to signal his cousin, towing a car a half-mile ahead, of this fact.
McIvor and the first driver drove up to the cousin, who had stopped.
Neither driver had phones. Neither had driver's licenses. Thankfully for them, each had a permanent resident's identity card.
McIvor radioed his office and worked his cell phone for a few minutes. His preference was to cite them for driving without a license, but then the reality of West Texas kicked in.
If he did that, he'd have to get four vehicles towed and drive the two guys to the Marfa jail. That would take him out of operation for hours. In a cash-strapped, understaffed department, the public good would've taken the hit.
After talking it over with the two drivers, McIvor helped them move the contents of the first driver's car to the second driver's car. He let them drive off. Two cars remained behind on U.S. 90.
'They said they were going to El Paso,†McIvor explained. “I told them to get a licensed driver, come back here and get this car and the one in Marfa. And I told them to call me, on my cell phone or at dispatch, when they came through. Then one of us would check on the license and then they could tow the cars.'
On the drive back to Fort Davis, McIvor's phone rang. Without getting into specifics, McIvor browbeat the caller for partying too much. There was neither legal action nor any official charge. McIvor, who had known the young man since he was a little boy, read the guy the riot act.
Said McIvor: 'That's how we do things out here.' "
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