Jesse Romero was a young reserve deputy sheriff when he got to see something he will never forget.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said about the arrest that was nearly 35 years ago.
KOGT reporter Margaret Toal also remembers the arrest. She was a reporter for the Beaumont Enterprise. Albert “Cowboy” Adams was the county’s animal control officer who would round-up loose livestock. That day he rounded up a man.
Adams caught a burglar while riding on horseback. He wrote a simple police report for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. Adams “Saw suspect. Roped suspect around neck. Suspect immediately became docile.” Toal can still quote the report. She lists it as her favorite among thousands of cop reports she has read through the years.
Recently, Romero’s wife, Tina, found a photograph of the arrest while going through folders in the couple’s house. Jesse Romero said a photographer with the daily Orange Leader captured moment and gave a copy of the picture to him. He saved it, but it got moved around.
Now, the black and white photograph is framed in Romero’s office at the West Orange Police Department, where he’s been the assistant chief for years.
He quips to young officers about the picture. “I’ve been a policeman so long they didn’t make color film.”
The arrest was made after a break-in at a house in the McLewis area south of Interstate 10 near Highway 62. Romero said it was on a Saturday afternoon about 1982 or 1983. He had graduated from West Orange-Stark in 1981 and was working as a reserve deputy under Sheriff Ed Parker.
He and Deputy Jeff Bingham got a call about a break-in. The burglar had run off into a wooded area. The two young deputies arrived and Adams came out on horseback leading the man with a rope. The lasso is loose around the man’s neck.
Romero said Adams, Constable Don Hubbard and Chipper Nance had been “out there roping, doing cowboy stuff” when they caught the man. Those cowboys didn’t have guns on them.”
The photo shows Adams in the front with a pipe in his mouth. He’s turned to the back to look at the burglar, wearing civilian clothes. Bingham is the taller deputy with dark hair. Romero has full, blond hair parted in the middle. Hubbard is on horseback behind Romero.
Today, Romero jokes about his hair back then. “I weighed 220 pounds and 100 pounds was hair,” he said. “The only person that had better wings was Kevin Brashears (now the investigator with the district attorney’s office).”
Romero said he had even longer hair in high school. It went all the way down his back. But his sophomore year, he made the Mustangs baseball team. Coach Ronnie Anderson made him cut it off.
Romero said his girlfriend at the time broke up with him because his hair was short. The break-up had a happy ending. Romero got another girlfriend, Tina. She was all he needed. They were later married and have stayed married.
He went to work full-time at the sheriff’s office in January 1986 as a jailer. He then worked as a patrol deputy before becoming an investigator in March 1987. Ever since then, he’s been an investigator. He’s been with the West Orange Police Department for 27 years.
Adams was a native of Orange County and was an elected director of the Orange County Drainage District when he died in 1998. His wife, Marcelle Adams, was the first woman to be an Orange County commissioner. Theresa Adams Beauchamp, his daughter, served several years on the Orange City Council.
Adams was accustomed to horses. He was known for riding a horse to the old Orange High School in the 1930s. One time, he had a friend, Wormy Smith, hold a door to the three-story school building open. Adams rode his horse straight down the hall of the school. Stories are that the principal, Helen Carr, chased him down Green Avenue.
Romero said he doesn’t know what happened to the burglar. He was a transient and no one kept up with his case. These days, no one remembers his name, but they will never forget how he was caught.
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