Robert had a passion for his large garden that he was so proud to grow year-after-year. He dreaded telling his client. All rights reserved. Hed hoped that once there he could stay a short time and workin the Permian Basin oil fields, perhapsand then return home with money for his. He took money in exchange for information about law enforcement activities, helping Chambers to smuggle more than 20 tons of cocaine and marijuana through the Big Bend, according to the DEA. And he was making a pittance compared to Robert and ACF (Amado Carillo Fuentes. Silvino couldnt compete in the U.S. because of his arrest record, but he still needed to race to remain financially free of the cartels, so he often stuck to races closer to home, like the upcoming ultramarathon in Cerocahui, which included a four-thousand-foot ascent up a road out of Urique. There were hairpin turns where the drop-off was thousands of feet, and he passed several roadside memorials. Others in the region had heard unsettling whispers, recalls former Presidio County Treasurer Mario Rivera, who served from 1974 until 2006. If circumstances once again drove Silvino to carry another drug load, hed be risking a potentially lengthy prison term. The former girlfriend of Preppy Killer Robert Chambers is breaking her silence about their relationship as a docuseries airing on Sundance and AMC takes a new look at the infamous murder. Silvino wore athletic gear and blue-and-yellow Asicsthe trails were too slippery, the roads too hard, for huaraches. That summer, he saw around four hundred cases come through the Alpine office, and within a few years its annual caseload had more than doubled. Remote and rugged, West Texas, along with much of the southwestern United States, has long been a key drug-smuggling corridor. From there, the runners followed white arrows spray-painted on the ground into a forest of pion pine, juniper, and small oak trees. He left three years later as a sergeant. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration said in a statement Friday that Chambers has moved about 10 tons of cocaine and 10 tons of marijuana through the Big Bend area since 1986. While Thompson, 72, is unlikely to return to Marfa, the painful story of his fall from grace soon will be told here again. It was a quick-paying job, and it would help their village. It was big news, from the Big Bend Sentinel (The Marfa Coke Bust, it blared) all the way to the New York Times. Up ahead, they saw the lights of a highway and knew they were within a dozen miles of their drop-off. Rogers also came from a ranching family, and she found her calling with the federal defenders. International runners and film crews descended on the Sierra Tarahumara. He had grown up on the ancient tales of men who sprinkled bone dust on the course the night before, thought to induce fatigue in your competitors. Even still, looking at the slight, dark-haired, shackled Vega, his anger bubbled up. It was just disbelief. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate, Former Presidio County Sheriff Rick Thompson. Scott the Scoopis Pro Wrestling Warriors' play-by-play announcer. Silvino, a farmer with four children, knew the canyons the way urban dwellers know city streets: every rock, cactus, and river bend was a sign. Read more:Elvis performed in San Antonio several times in his heyday. A beloved law officer had betrayed the badge, causing a tragedy of epic proportions for his family and the town. He now lives in Granbury, Texas. He also was the first to question the close relationship Chambers had with Thompson. Thompson and former County Judge Bobby Martinez shake hands. They moved up and down the Interstate 35 corridor so often that Chambers lost count of the number of schools he attended. In a bizarre news conference held just days later, Thompson admitted the ton of cocaine was his, but he claimed it was part of a one-man reverse sting. Silvino, with his farmland afflicted by unrelenting drought, was one of the desperate ones, so he signed on to tote drugs. He and his cousins would be paid 15,000 pesos ($825) apiece. They were taken from Chambers county, Ala., by said Ware to Texas some-where about the year 1847. How could he be responsible for all the backpacks when he only carried one? There was no sewer connection in their trailer, and electricity came from an extension cord that stretched from his grandparents house. There are unanswered questions, he added. He claimed $1.5 million in narcotics seized when in fact $5,000 was seized. He crossed abandoned desert valleys on old Apache land with nothing to eat, drinking only dung-infested runoff water. He laughed at the memory of a. Someone said it was like seeing the Marlboro Man go up in flames, he said. Once there, he picked chiles to earn the bus fare farther south to Chihuahua City, where he finally cobbled together the fare to Huisuchi by making cheese at a quesera. The squat white ejido headquarters proclaimed Porochi as the Tierra de Corredores, or the Land of Runners. It was the halfway point. By 2010, entire communities had emptied out of the canyons, and some ten thousand had fled to the city of Chihuahua, where they were more easily conscripted into smuggling. He ate a sandwich and drank a bottle of Coca-Cola. In these rugged gorges, they developed a unique running style that eventually brought them fame. Strapped to his back were two homespun burlap packs, one filled with 45 pounds of marijuana bricks and the other with enough burritos and gallon jugs of water to survive another week in the wilderness. It was cool now, but the temperature would climb into the 70s. They had a huge drug bust, but the end result was they got a tiny amount of drugs from college kids, cooks and drifters, McNamara recalled. Hell walk straight. The vast majority of cases were for illegal entryimmigration crimes eclipsed all other federal offensesbut they also saw increased numbers of traffickers. The Tarahumara would know how to survive this. We know that Earlene Love, Erline Love, and three other persons also lived at this address, perhaps within a different time frame. Locals recall how Thompson held court over morning coffee with other officials, cops and agents in the cramped 19th-century limestone building that held his office and the county jail. He took the office after his predecessor, Sheriff Hank Hamilton, was gunned down in 1973 by a mentally unstable man. There were comments like, I wonder how much he kept?, the sheriff said. Silvino felt the pressure of what hed come to donot just for his own survival but for the survival of his people. See the links below for more info. Need an attorney in Chambers County, Texas? Silvino, a farmer with four children, knew the canyons the way urban dwellers know city streets: every rock, cactus, and river bend was a sign. When they neared the San Isidro Lodge, Silvino was in fourth but still in range of the leaders. Phyllis was an immigrant who was . 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. The thick old-growth trees had been chopped down long ago and sent to the sawmills of nearby Bahuichivo. A little time in the Western District of Texas jail isnt going to keep you from trying to feed your family.. . The female racers wore their everyday clothes: skirts full of reds, yellows, pinks, and blues, and matching head scarves to block the sun. Under any circumstances, safeguarding so vast and wild a county with the help of only two deputies was a daunting job. Now here he was, with six members of his own familynearly a year after Born to Run had become an international best sellerstriding through the dark up the boot heel of New Mexico. But racing couldnt alleviate the hardships ravaging the Tarahumara themselves. The cartels were not letting up. Multinational corporations seized the merchandising opportunities, and soon, people all over the world were wearing barefoot-style shoes. In late 1991, when Chambers was four, his father was arrested in the largest drug bust on record in West Texas. Thompson acknowledged his guilt and agreed to cooperate with federal investigators. In Spanish, the judge ran through the conditions of the imprisonment twice so Vega could understand. Competitors from all over the world, electrified by "Born to Run", made the pilgrimage to the Tarahumara homeland. Chambers had been selling drugs out of his girlfriend Shawn Kovell's Manhattan apartment. He had escaped, but Silvino continued running through the night, slept half of the next day, and then ran through the afternoon and the next night. When the DEA tried to contact him, he referred them to his lawyer. The darkness lifted just beyond the otherwise dreary concrete plaza, revealing the fertile valley that gives Cerocahui its name: between two mountains. The slope up the mountainside was rocky and dusty, the soil eroded from years of logging and grazing. Jackson was a regular, and he later devoted most of a chapter in his book One Ranger to a tortured examination of their relationship. Two weeks earlier, sicarios, or hit men, had stopped in Rejogochi to ask for Chvez, the young activist, and her father, Makawi. They bought blue jeans for those wearing traditional loincloths and paired them with guides to lead them to the border at night. Stinson, now 74, lives in Colorado and is writing about his experiences. But, as they staked it out, they realized they were not alone. The third time, though, in February 2007, Border Patrol agents found him and two others hiding in creosote bushes one hundred miles west of Las Cruces, with three backpacks that totaled 194 pounds. Some folks called him cocky. The second time, he completed his drop at a fancy hotel outside Las Cruces, New Mexico. Silvino picked up speed as the trail descended toward the village of Porochi. 304 Dianella St, Wendell, NC 27591 MLS ID #2490539, Ryan Homes. The American ultramarathoner Micah True got to know some of the Tarahumara runners in Leadville, and he was so changed by the experience that he later moved to the Sierra Madre. MR. EDITOR--I desire to find my brother; his name was Robert Co- . Robert Stanley Chambers Obituary. After successes in Costa Rica and Spain, he landed on the cover of Runners World Mxico, in December 2014. Texas Department of Criminal Justice | PO Box 99 . He was back in the chia fields after breakfast. The smell of charcoal-grilled chicken filled the air. DISCLAIMER NOTICE: ALL ARE PRESUMED INNOCENT. Imagine walking this with forty-four pounds on your back, she said, not counting food and water. There has to be a better way to deal with this, she said. The Border Patrol had found them. ROBERT D CHAMBERS Private / Unlisted Po Box 4, May, Brown County, TX-76857 Cellular: No mobile line available Edit / Delete Person *Reflects database record as of Sunday, December 25, 2022. $13.99 . The six-foot-two Chambers towered over him by more than a foot. It seemed that everyone profited except the Tarahumara. Around the same time, federal defenders in Alpine had represented a pair of Tarahumara teenagers also recruited in Chihuahua. It was still dark when Silvino woke two hours before the big race in Cerocahui last October. The journalist Christopher McDougall chronicled the race, and his ensuing bookBorn to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seenbecame an international sensation, igniting a global running craze. Tax lawyers can assist with understanding tax law and resolve tax liens, back taxes, tax debt recovery and relief, and IRS compliance issues. It was at least forty miles through the driest landscape Id ever seen. Still, he got paid only if he successfully completed his mission. darkness lifted just beyond the otherwise dreary concrete plaza, revealing the fertile valley that gives Cerocahui its name: between two mountains. The slope up the mountainside was rocky and dusty, the soil eroded from years of logging and grazing. 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. While the podcast features numerous sources, here are a few of the main players in the story. Thompson and Chambers agreed to plead guilty in hopes of receiving lighter sentences. Runners would have to reach the plaza, grab another bracelet, and then double back to the edge of town before returning. And so when Micah True hosted the second Caballo Blanco, Silvino couldnt make the race; he was sitting in a New Mexico prison. Vega, it turned out, was a Tarahumara. Family and friends are welcome to send flowers or leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the . That year, many had shown up to the event starving, walking or hitchhiking from hundreds of miles around, bringing only the clothes on their backs. He also made a cryptic remark that wounded every law enforcement agent in the Big Bend. Robert Chambers is a resident of Austin. Once there, he picked chiles to earn the bus fare farther south to Chihuahua City, where he finally cobbled together the fare to Huisuchi by making cheese at a, Silvino swore he would never run drugs again, but by 2010, there was still not enough food to eat. Any other way, Chambers learned, and the courthouse would be backed up for years. He quickly worked his way up to a key operator in smuggling drugs into the U.S. and after Acostas death, he even held the title of The Plaza (the kingpin who controlled all drug movement through Ojinaga)a strange position for an American. We hadnt seen another car in two hours. They were close now, a few hours from their destination. Rogers pointed to the barely visible Rio Grande just under a mile beyond, and San Antonio del Bravo farther still. Use FindLaw to hire a local tax lawyer near you to help structure an offer and compromise, fight IRS collections, and assist with wage and garnishment releases. When I stopped by his office one afternoon to see if he would visit Candelaria with me, he declined. Chambers grew up on the border. Spectators wagered clothes, goats, or money on the outcome and lit the way at night with pine-resin torches. Thompson started as a deputy sheriff in Presidio County, which covers 3,856 square miles and shares more than 150 river miles with Mexico. At his sentencing hearing May 10, Thompson apologized and his wife made a final plea for leniency. A hail-fellow-well met. His wife, Hilda, begged him not to go, but he felt he had no choice. He and his cousins would be paid 15,000 pesos ($825) apiece. Stinson was the lead investigator for the Drug Enforcement Agency in the bust. There was little shade, and he dropped down on a set of steps next to four old campesinos. As Silvino left the San Isidro Lodge, where he had stayed the night, he glanced over at six mangy dogs and cats sleeping next to the embers of a nearby campfire. There was no sewer connection in their trailer, and electricity came from an extension cord that stretched from his grandparents house. AGE 60s Robert Nicklos Chambers Lolita, TX View Full Report Used To Live In Relatives Youve done this before., In fact, Silvino had carried a mochila, as the narcos called it, three times before. Some Tarahumara activists tried to make their plight known, like Irma Chvez Cruz, a 25-year-old mother who was a friend of Silvinos. About three hours later, the agents moved in to inspect the trailer, parked with the sheriffs other equipment. Others sought his counsel. Rick stays in jail because he believed in certain things, he said. His wife, Hilda, begged him not to go, but he felt he had no choice. But unlike Chambers, who was beating down the door to make a plea deal, Thompson initially hung tough and it cost him dearly. In his book on his travels through the Sierra Madre mountains, Unknown Mexico, he recounts that when the Jesuits first arrived and asked the Tarahumara about the canyons depth, they replied, Only the birds know., For centuries the Tarahumara got by as subsistence farmers. Nobody was warming up when he arrived; the Tarahumara dont stretch. They owned a house on West Washington Street, and the youngest of their three children still was at home. Chvez had learned Spanish as a teenager, to serve as an interpreter for her people, then earned a university degree in ecology and gotten elected to local government. True wondered how they would fare against the Tarahumara, and he sought to revitalize these local traditions. In that era, there were many unsupervised border crossings and the Border Patrol was understaffed. Hes a good man and has led a good life, she said to a packed courthouse in Pecos. 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