LOLA'S BACK – SANS COLLAR – AT SAME SPOT SHE DISAPPEARED

 By Juan Montoya

Soon-to-be-mama cow La Vaca Lola is back. 

On the Thursday before July 4, a cow belonging to Isiah Garcia, a lifelong rancher on Garcia Lane on Morningside Park, wandered off from her corral as other livestock had done in other times. In those cases, neighbors often called the Garcias to tell them their cows or horses were loose.

In cases where the neighbors could not locate him, the Brownsville Police Dept. had called the Sheriff's Dept who in turn called Sonny Ramos, the "County Cowboy" who picks up errant livestock and holds them until the owner inquires of their animals. This time, the "cowboy" said he didn't have his cow,

Curiously, this time it didn't work out that way. And it would only get curiouser and curiouser.

Brownsville Police officer Roland Trujillo showed up at the scene after neighboring ranchers reported the wandering animal. But instead of calling the sheriff's department, Trujillo said he had  allowed a man with a gray truck and a trailer to pick up the cow. 

That's what Trujillo said the second time. As Garcia kept looking for his cow, Trujillo's story kept on changing. 

"When I talked to him the first time he told me that he had spoken with me and that he had seen me put the cow back into the corral," Garcia said. "That was a lie and I told him he had never spoken with me before. If I had put back the cow  in the corral, why would I want to talk to him?"

But through neighbors, Isiah Garcia said that the man in the gray truck with the trailer was identified as a retired police officer David Garcia.

"When I went to talk to get a police report, they told me they couldn't give me on right now and asked me if I wanted to talk to Trujillo," he said. "Then I went to talk to David Garcia after I had gone to the PD. He let me look into his corral and the cow wasn't there. Did someone call him to tell him I was coming?"  

Stymied, he went to make a report with the Cameron County Sheriff's Department and was told to get a report from the BPD.

In the past, when a horse valued at between $5,000 to $10,000 each, the police would call the sheriff, turn over the livestock to the "county cowboy," and then pay an impoundment fee of $40 per day. 

In this case, the cow never made it to the county impound and Trujillo's incident report has never surfaced.

"The cow was really tame and friendly," Garcia said.
"It always made its way back when it wandered off. She was so tame that my son named her "La Vaca Lola,'" he said. "I paid $1,100 for her, but now she is worth worth about $2,000 because Lola was pregnant."

(In the photo, Garcia leads Lola around the Garcia spread.)  

Garcia, 24, who said he has been a rancher all his life and started riding horses when he was four, says he won't let the case die even if the BPD, the sheriff's department, or local prosecutors won't do anything.

"This is corruption at its worse," Garcia said. "Maybe it will take the Texas Rangers to look into this."

(After this post, a source emailed us to say that the USDA tick inspectors had seen a cow resembling the missing bovine and were on the case.)

But then, as if by magic, today La Vaca Lola was dropped off and appeared at exactly the same spot where she had first been picked up. The only thing missing was its collar identifying Lola as the Garcias' cow.

But the Garcias say they won't be so easily dissuaded from pursuing the truth on how their cow was taken and then suddenly reappeared at exactly the same spot where it disappeared aboard a trailer..

"We will continue to defend the rights of local residents and assure that this doesn't happen to us or anyone else," Isiah Garcia said. "Corrupted cops have to learn that t hey should do their job the way it should be done."