BY Mark D. Wilson
San Antonio Express-News
SAN ANTONIO — Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Victor Quintanilla remembers his first day on the job at the Bexar County Jail on Sept. 17, 1974.
Back then, the jail was on Laredo Street. He walked into his first morning shift and received a set of keys. He says he will always remember the smell of the breakfast being served that day: eggs, toast and applesauce.
On Tuesday, Quintanilla’s 40-year career with the Sheriff’s Office will officially come to an end when he retires.
Members of the NAACP, county leaders and Sheriff Susan Pamerleau will recognize Quintanilla’s service during a ceremony to start at 1 p.m. today at the Bexar County Jail.
Among the honors he’ll get is the Bexar County Commissioners Court Hidalgo Award for outstanding public service, which his father, Manuel Quintanilla, also received, 22 years ago.
It was Manuel Quintanilla, former commander of the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Reserves, who nudged Victor in the direction of the Sheriff’s Office and encouraged him to stick with it in the early days when he wasn’t sure it was the right fit. Quintanilla had graduated from high school and attended college for a time.
“After that I was more interested in getting to work than anything else,” he said. “(My dad) suggested it.”
The Quintanilla family has a legacy of law enforcement. Every one of Quintanilla’s siblings works in law enforcement at some level.
Even so, Quintanilla’s early days at the jail came with some doubt, as he was one of just a few detention officers with a formal education.
“I was working with some guys that couldn’t sign their name,” he said.
“Old-timers,” he said, felt threatened that Quintanilla would take their jobs because he had more formal education. Many refused to show him the ropes, and they instead just tried to get him to stay out of the way.
At one point, he says, he approached his father and said he didn’t think the job was right for him.
“Just give it a try,” he remembers his father saying. “For all you know, you’ll be there for 20 years.”
With that encouragement, Quintanilla kept at it and rose through the ranks.
He was among the detention officers who moved 1,100 inmates from the former jail on Laredo Street to the new one at 200 N. Comal St. in 1988.
He said inmates on the fifth floor of the old facility trashed the place when they realized what was happening, tearing toilets from the walls and throwing light fixtures out the windows.
There are now more than 1,100 inmates on the second floor alone.
He also weathered the transition from linear supervision, in which detention officers supervise inmates in cells separated by bars, to direct supervision, in which they interact with inmates in an open space.
“That was the meteor that hit the Earth and killed the dinosaurs,” he said, explaining how many of the old guard left the jail thinking the new method would never work.
Now that his time with the office has come to an end, Quintanilla said he will either move on to something else or just enjoy his retirement. While some fishing is in order, he said he isn’t sure exactly where the next chapter will take him.
What he does know is what his father would say if he were alive today.
“He would say, ‘Good job,’” Quintanilla said.