Editorial: Sheriff Alex Villanueva is out but leaves behind a deeply damaged department
Posted: July 30, 2019
By: Jennifer Stoll
It’s time for us to talk about the legacy a local sheriff is leaving behind.
In the end, Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s resignation was a result of a decision he had made many years ago when he was a teenager and became a leader of the San Antonio Police Department. When he was 19, he came back to San Antonio after serving in other places on the force or in the United States military. He found a job at a local convenience store, where he cleaned the restroom and made the coffee. He came back, found another job in a convenience store, and found another. At the same time he started thinking about where he would go to college. The first option was San Antonio State, a school whose athletic teams included many former players from the San Antonio Spurs and the local high school basketball programs. But he also liked the idea of going to Texas State where he was friends with a woman from the school who went by the name of “The Lady.” She was a student in the biology department, and she encouraged him to go there. When he got a better job cleaning houses, he returned the favor. When he retired and started driving his Chevy truck to his new job in his hometown of San Antonio, he had met his future wife. They married, moved into a house, and became the parents of a daughter. Then he began thinking about college. He took one more job cleaning houses in San Antonio before making the big decision.
“I figured we had some friends who lived around there and I knew they would make us some money,” he said. “I figured I’ll try my luck with a business opportunity.” It was an early 1980s and a few years before the Internet existed, Villanueva had been involved in the computer industry. He was doing sales and marketing for computer company Microcom, Inc. For six months, he worked as an account executive. The company didn’t take his interest and he was turned down. That’s how he came to work for another company, which was an