Spend five minutes with Sheriff D’Wayne Jernigan and it’s clear, he knows everyone in Val Verde County. That’s no small feat given that there are almost 50,000 people in the county. Inside of a minute at a Mexican restaurant for lunch, he stopped five times to talk to people and that was just on the way to our table. It’s clear people adore him and the feeling’s mutual. Jernigan spent a career working for border patrol and then came to Del Rio to retire, to be close to the Rio Grande and a lake with some of the best bass fishing in the country. Instead, he ended up running for Sheriff’s department.

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Running the department is also something of a feat. They have 17 deputies for a county that’s about 3300 square miles, an area bigger than the state of Rhode Island. Up until recently, there were usually only two deputies on at any given time. One deputy covered one half of the county, the second took the other. But that’s changing. In fact, it started changing, Sheriff Jernigan says, after a meeting with Governor Rick Perry.

Jernigan says Perry met with him and the other members of the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition. Jernigan is the only Republican in the crew and his fellow Sheriffs were ribbing him, wondering what a Republican Governor was going to do. Jernigan himself says he wasn’t expecting much. Politicians had come and go before, promising a lot and doing little.

So you’ll imagine the Sheriff’s surprise when the money started rolling in. Last year, Texas lawmakers signed off on $110 million dollars to continue programs sending money and resources (like state helicopters) to help local law enforcement on the border. Sheriff Jernigan says he’s been able to hire three more deputies and pay for lots of overtime with the funding he’s received.