Who I Am.

Service Is My History

In 2001, I graduated from Newman Smith High School in Carrollton, Tx. While attending the University of North Texas, I started my Law Enforcement Career as a Detention Officer at the Denton County Sheriff’s Office. Ultimately, I was there for just over a year and had become a member of their Special Operations Response Team (SORT) before hiring on as a Police Recruit with the City of Denton at 21. I went on to become a full time Police Officer with the City of Denton for 9 years and served for another 9 years with the City’s Reserve Unit where I became the unit’s Lieutenant and Treasurer. While full time at the City, I was a patrol officer, a training officer, and a founding member of the Community Response Team (CRT). During my tenure as a Reserve Officer, I obtained my Master Peace Officer’s License which is now inactive as I do not serve in any current Law Enforcement capacity.

While transitioning to the Reserve Unit I started working, full time, with my wife, Shelly, at the company we founded (in 2010) at our dining room table in Aubrey, Tx. Since 2013, I have been the Executive Director of Operations for Avid Quality Care where I work, along with 100 other employees, to ensure that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have both their residential placement and their medical/therapeutic needs met. We serve approximately 130 individuals, in approaching 30 group homes and foster/host care homes primarily in Denton and Collin Counties. In addition we operate an associated, but separate, Day Habilitation center where those with IDD attend and participate in individualized skills and socialization (ISS) at their own individual level. It is an incredibly rewarding personal experience to serve truly deserving individuals with life-necessitated care.

Over the last few years, my role has become less day to day and more involved with the legislative matters associated with our professional work which includes endless advocacy with the Texas House/Senate members, the Governor’s Office, the Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), as well as other disability advocacy groups and their associated staff. After years of reaching out, educating, informing our Legislators of their shortfalls related to funding for IDD programing across the state…the State of Texas still funds programing, for those who cannot take care of themselves, at rates that place Texas last, to second to last, in funding in the country. It has been this way since that metric has been tracked and I cannot sit by and watch disinterested politicians implode programming that takes care of tens of thousands of Texans with disabilities especially while Texas is having record budget surpluses. Our Legislative officials have refused to address programing that they themselves created with the alternatives to care being exponentially more costly in terms of both lives and dollars.

I am asking for your vote so we can start taking care of the least of us, along with their caregivers, in an honorable, respectable, and fiscally responsible manner.