From lotto millions to a felony indictment. How reality TV could undo a Texas sheriff.
The first time Robert Chody stood before a phalanx of television cameras was in 2001. He and his wife grinned widely as they received the largest-ever Texas lottery check: $51 million and change.
“We’ve been getting calls from people we normally don’t receive calls from. ... So yeah, I think it is going to change a lot,” Chody, then a rank-and-file Austin police officer, told reporters inquiring about how the newfound wealth would alter the family’s life.
The windfall paved the path for the man who grew up in a Florida trailer park with a single mother to fulfill his boyhood dreams of becoming a law enforcement hero. In recent years, he’s done it with a camera crew at the ready and an adoring audience who loves law enforcement as much as Chody had come to when, at 15, an officer rescued him from the terrifying fists of his mother’s boyfriend.
Since winning the lottery nearly two decades ago, Chody has built a reputation as a conservative lawman with a penchant for social media and a craving for celebrity. He quickly quit his job patrolling weekend revelers on Austin’s rowdy Sixth Street and began cultivating a political career that would lead him to the top law enforcement job in one of Texas’ most notoriously tough-on-crime counties.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/10/13/tx-sheriff-won-the-lottery-scored-a-tv-show-faces-felony-charges/5923446002/