After serving Willacy County for 35 years, Sheriff Larry Spence retired on Thursday.

The last day of the 2020 year marked the end of a lengthy chapter in Spence's life, spent in Willacy County, somewhere the Indiana native said he never expected to be.

"...Enlisted in the air force, came to basic training in San Antonio at the Lackland Air Force Base," Spence said. "[It] was hot and [I] left there thinking, 'I'm never going back to Texas' and God probably chuckled a little bit."

After serving in Vietnam, Spence returned to Indiana with his wife, Maria Reyes, a Raymondville native. He took a job as a police officer and the two raised their young son. 

After his wife decided the family needed to move somewhere with warmer winter weather, Spence found himself in Texas again.

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