He attributed part of the Tarahumaras success to their minimal footwear; they ran with a lightness unfamiliar to American runners, landing on the midpoint of their foot instead of the heel. Spectators wagered clothes, goats, or money on the outcome and lit the way at night with pine-resin torches. Chambers never forgot that first time he accompanied Rogers to jail as an intern. As the cartel war ricocheted from one canyon to the next, Urique became one of the last towns to be engulfed by intense violence. Mounds of melon-size rocks blanketed every grave. The expected price . They discovered what they believed to be a large load of cocaine covered by several bales of hay and empty feed sacks, Stinson testified. At first, Vega didn't seem to. Still, he got paid only if he successfully completed his mission. He enticed locals to enter by promising food vouchers to anyone who finished. After field tests confirmed the drug, agents hauled the trailer to Alpine. Others long had expressed doubts about Thompson, including Jack McNamara, publisher of the Nimby News in Alpine, who was critical of Thompsons leadership of the West Texas Multi-County Narcotics Task Force. Theyre some of the toughest people in the world.. He knew what an absence like that could do to a family. Scanning his new clients arrest report, Chambers expected the details to coalesce into the usual pattern, but he noticed an anomaly. He got along with almost everybody, except those he locked up. Paul Chambers was sitting in his Alpine office when he got an email about a new client named Sebastian Vega Genoveva waiting for him in jail. 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. There, it also became common to see Tarahumara children begging or selling candy and key chains on the streets. In Spanish, the judge ran through the conditions of the imprisonment twice so Vega could understand. He found a friend to front him enough to get to Janos, the first town on his route back. Robert and Kimberly both received bachelor's degrees in business administration from Texas A&M and were members of the Fellows program. He had run one hundred miles. 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. The prize for winning was significant: 14,000 pesos ($765), which, coincidentally, was nearly the going rate for running drugs across the border. In time, the backpackers shed come to represent were known to ask for her by name. But racing couldnt alleviate the hardships ravaging the Tarahumara themselves. According to McNamara, Thompson mismanaged task force funds, illegally destroyed its records and grossly exaggerated its accomplishments. A pair of uncles on his moms side also went to prison for drug offenses, and so did a paternal uncle. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents left him in Jurez without enough money for a bus ticket home. Together with her father, an activist, musician, and poet known as Makawi, she pleaded for government officials in Chihuahua to help prevent drug traffickers from stealing their land and their water. Rogers pointed to the barely visible Rio Grande just under a mile beyond, and San Antonio del Bravo farther still. Related:President Ford's visit to San Antonio included culinary oops. But I had my suspicions. It was a half hour after midnight and Silvino Cubesare Quimare was approaching the ghost town of Separ, in southwest New Mexico. The news coverage he could find estimated that more than a hundred Tarahumara had been arrested during the previous decade, but unless the defendants had to have a Rarmuri translator, like Escuders, their background had probably never come up. 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 went to prison for life. They had come from as far away as Chihuahua, riding two buses for eleven hours combined. Now 73, he lives in Midland, Texas with his wife, and remains close to his two sons and daughter. Only a change in federal sentencing law years later spared Thompson from dying in prison. Silvino emerged from the forest onto a roadreally a collection of rocks and dirt. He looked up at the stars and thought about curses, as older Tarahumara runners tend to do before a race. . It didnt make sense, Vega said, and worse, it was unfair. At his sentencing hearing May 10, Thompson apologized and his wife made a final plea for leniency. Sign Up. Yes, Robert Chambers is alive. A month later, Chambers stood next to Vega againthis time in an El Paso courtroomfor a second and final hearing on his slightly improved sentence. He was born on March 15, 1930, in Waynesville, North Carolina to James Guy and Hazel Medford Chambers. His plans are unknown, but his place in the annals of law enforcement infamy, as the Texas border sheriff who sold his badge for drug money, will be secure. He finished second in an ultramarathon in Austria, the first of many races in more than half a dozen countries where his expenses were paid and the possible earnings were worth the trip. People who think that are mentally unstable. He wore two hats, as the sheriff and tax assessor. The cartels were not letting up. 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. Rogers pulled off on Farm-to-Market Road 2810, better known as Pinto Canyon Road, where the asphalt ended. His wife, Hilda, begged him not to go, but he felt he had no choice. Uriques head of tourism watched in tears as Tarahumara runners collapsed. There were hairpin turns where the drop-off was thousands of feet, and he passed several roadside memorials. Thompson was very popular in Marfa, which back then was a gritty, down-in-the-boot-heels ranching town of about 2,500 people, a far cry from todays hip cultural mecca, popular with wealthy New Yorkers and Californians. At one point, he said, when Chambers drug-loaded truck stalled near the border, Thompson quickly appeared to give him a jump. Tarahumara is a Spanish corruption of the tribes name, Rarmuri, meaning ones with light feet or foot runners.. Cops and crooks are of the same caliber. The vast majority of cases were for illegal entryimmigration crimes eclipsed all other federal offensesbut they also saw increased numbers of traffickers. He laughed at the memory of a. There was no trial. He also enlisted the two best Tarahumara runners: Silvino, who was 28 at the time, and his younger cousin Arnulfo Quimare Qui. In 2006, he persuaded Scott Jurek, the top American, to travel to Urique Canyon for a trail race he was organizing that is now known as the Ultra Caballo Blanco. MLS ID #2490541. Thompson and former County Judge Bobby Martinez shake hands. AKA: Robert C Chambers, Claude Chambers, Bob Chambers Work: - Electrical Contractor, Amarillo Construction LLC - Chief Executive Officer College: TEXAS STATE TECH COLLEGE WEST TEXAS High School: TASCOSA HIGH SCHOOL View Reputation Profile Robert Wayne Chambers , 59 Lives in Leander, TX AKA: Robert W Chambers PWW(defunct) Final roster, Michael Avalon, Michael Berlot, Damon Black, Blitzschlag, Vanessa von . And he was making a pittance compared to Robert and ACF (Amado Carillo Fuentes. Back then, nationality didnt matter as much; people were simply trying to make ends meet on both sides of the Rio Grande. For Chambers, it was one of the saddest days of his life. With the Sinaloa in command, land theft and poppy growing increased. An agent on a dirt bike tore after him as the others scattered. ClustrMaps. Robert Stanley Chambers August 10, 1952 February 4, 2022 Robert Stanley Chambers, of Talty, Texas, passed away on February 4th, 2022, at his home in Talty. Robert Conrad Photo, Robert Horton Photo, Springfield Trapdoor, Council Tool Collectible Axes & Hatches, Leaded Lamp, He hadnt eaten anything, not even the pocket-size bean burritos and salsa he normally ran with. Robert Stanley Chambers Obituary. Throughout the series, D'Amico retells the story of Sheriff Rick Thompson and Rob Chambers, and the bust that brought them down. Soon the sound of the dirt bike faded. And he gained notoriety for breaking a man accused of rape in the U.S. out of a Mexican prison, dragging him back across the border and tying him to a tree naked for the local authorities to find. From then on gunfire could routinely be heard in the town and up the canyon. But besides stamina, rarajipari demanded selflessness and strategy. Robert Chambers ROW Manager at StrikeForce ROW Acquisition Service, LLC Granbury, Texas, United States 241 connections Join to connect StrikeForce ROW Acquisition Service, LLC BlackStone School. 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. (He starred in a public service announcement TV ad urging people to call in and help lock up smugglers.). Barajas, who counted Thompson as a friend, worked closely with him on the notorious Rio Grande sniper case, in which a teenager, shooting from a canyon rim on the Mexican side, killed a tourist rafter and wounded a guide in 1988. In the years ahead, she cycled in and out of prison for similar charges. He grew up believing hed never see him again outside of prison. St. Robert, MO. The explorer Lumholtz had surveyed Urique from up here more than a century ago. He was in third place. 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. It seemed that everyone profited except the Tarahumara. All rights reserved. It was cool now, but the temperature would climb into the 70s. Lookup the home address, phone numbers, email address for this person. Ott-Laughlin Funeral Home OBITUARY Robert Mark Chambers March 17, 1943 - January 9, 2014 Chambers, Robert Mark ("Bob"), 70, of Winter Haven and Ft. Pierce, Florida passed away of heart failure January 9, 2014. The citizens, he said. 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. Two runners in their mid-twenties were planning to challenge him, and the prize for winning was significant: 14,000 pesos ($765), which, coincidentally, was nearly the going rate for running drugs across the border. When he was thirteen, they went to live with his mothers family, in Abilene. Location Bellevue, WA, US Work Localization Editor @ The Pokmon Company International QA Localization Tester- Bilingual German and English @ 2k Vegas Quality Analyst @ Teleperformance see more Education He was sentenced to 19 years behind barswhere he remains today. 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. He found a friend to front him enough to get to Janos, the first town on his route back. Cook, a U.S. Customs agent, was DEA agent Dale Stinsons partner. Not again, he thought. His black-granite headstone outshone rows of wooden crosses. Witnessed: Borderlands is a new true-crime podcast from journalist Rob D'Amico, set during the peak of the War On Drugs. Though clouds had gathered off and on over the villagers homesdark, billowing masses that overshadowed their huts among the fields of cornit had not rained. Chambers remembers his grandfather watching the Weather Channel regularly, hoping for rain. He had to run. After walking for ten days in the harsh borderland, their guide had abandoned them that morning. Unlike many of his classmates, he didnt have to wait long for work. 1992 Press Photo Grand Isle Mayor Andy Valence addressing the City Council . He laughed at the memory of a rarajipari when an opposing team cast a spell on his team. The judge saw things differently after hearing evidence the sheriff had been corrupt since 1986 or 1987. Don Robert Hendrix, loving husband, caring father, loyal friend, devoted educator, world traveler, Houston sports fan, and music lover passed away in peace at his home on April 28, 2021. He considered skipping the race, which was 37 miles, but the next event was four months away. Many Tarahumara were forced to grow these crops, their wages docked and their land stolen. Stinson, now 74, lives in Colorado and is writing about his experiences. He and his cousins would be paid 15,000 pesos ($825) apiece. It was big news, from the Big Bend Sentinel (The Marfa Coke Bust, it blared) all the way to the New York Times. But beginning in the sixteenth century the tribe fled Spanish invaders, Jesuit missionaries, and Mexican settlersand their fatal diseases, forced labor, and attempted conversionsretreating into the Sierra Madres forbidding landscape. Stinson was the lead investigator for the Drug Enforcement Agency in the bust. Two weeks earlier, sicarios, or hit men, had stopped in Rejogochi to ask for Chvez, the young activist, and her father, Makawi. Chambers dug out the sentencing guidelines: a scant .11 pounds of meth would double their potential sentences, from five to ten years. He hadnt been feeling well and had visited a hospital the day before. And when cocaine starts flowing across the Mexican border like never before, Robert dives in headfirst. A hail-fellow-well met. He was the snake he had the contacts in Mexico, he said. The race was part of the budding sport of extreme long-distance trail running, in which race lengths range from slightly longer than the standard 26.2-mile marathon to more than 150 miles. Last summer, according to a courtroom interpreter, one witness in a backpacker trial in Pecos said that smugglers, It was the eighth-annual ultramarathon here, and 120 runners, mostly Tarahumara, were going to set off from its plaza. That part of the state was out of control, said Dale Stinson, head of the DEA regional office. They moved up and down the Interstate 35 corridor so often that Chambers lost count of the number of schools he attended. Thompson is being released this month after serving 26 years in prison for cocaine smuggling. Rogers, a family friend, was now a private attorney and had also been assigned a member of the group. . I have never heard Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents left him in Jurez without enough money for a bus ticket home. In the middle of August, Silvino and seven others cleared eight acres of weeds by hand amid a plague of red ants, tarantulas, bees, gnats, flies, scorpions, snakes, floods, and 125-degree heat. The Tarahumara would know how to survive this. Rick had such good favor. Early the next morning, with only a little pain in his right leg, Silvino drove in a low gear down the canyon to Urique, listening to traditional Tarahumara folk music from a USB stick connected to the CD player. See the links below for more info. The grief and horror of the people concerning this incident appeared to be beyond the normal consternation of people in situations such as this. 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. Silvino flung his bags into the sand and began to run. Wearing sandals and swigging beers at the final aid station before the finish, the Tarahumara runners captured first, second, and fifth place and left behind hundreds of mesmerized competitors and fans. After serving 26 years, he will be released April 18. Hartshorn . How could he be responsible for all the backpacks when he only carried one? Unable to afford lawyers, each defendant was assigned one by the court. He messed up one time. Then again, he spent much of his life severed from them. Even still, looking at the slight, dark-haired, shackled Vega, his anger bubbled up. Finally, after a few hours, Vega asked the translator if she could speak more slowly. 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. I caught a load of pot the other day. A fine salary, but it was an experimental crop: a 64-year-old American named Mickey Mahaffey, who had lived among the Tarahumara for two decades and married Silvinos younger sister, Carmen, struck up a deal to grow eight acres for an energy-bar company based in Richmond, Virginia. Now 56, he lives in El Paso. Organizers across the world sought Tarahumara runners for their races, and those who moved comfortably among chabochi, or outsiders, began receiving regular invitations to race. While working a job canning chiles, they were told they could earn twice as much at a pecan orchard near the Rio Grande. Then, with the path hugging a creek, he entered tiny Porochi. It had once served as an outpost for tourists exploring the natural beauty of the surrounding canyons, which helped keep it relatively tranquil until a Sinaloa bosss nephew was murdered there, in late 2014. Others in the region had heard unsettling whispers, recalls former Presidio County Treasurer Mario Rivera, who served from 1974 until 2006. In the Tarahumara, the cartels found literal drug runners, who not only could cover incredible distances but were desperate enough to do it. A veteran of the DEA at the time, he had previously served in Mexico and Panama and was partner to Kiki Camarena, the DEA agent violently tortured and murdered in Mexico in 1985. There are unanswered questions, he added. Robert Chambers. It was at least forty miles through the driest landscape Id ever seen. 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. Spotting the same vehicle minutes later, still driving dark, the agent recognized it. Below are the results we could find for Robert Chambers. Looking back, former DEA agent Stinson said the Marfa drug case neither was the biggest nor most interesting of his career. When he met Vega again, Chambers jokingly asked, If you could run like that, why didnt you escape? Vega said he never could have evaded the agents in their trucks and helicopters. 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