By Juan Montoya
Add fighting avian blood suckers to the long resume former Cameron County District Attorney investigator, Port of Brownsville Police Dept. chief, narco-satanista vanquisher, and pioneer Brownsville family descendant George Gavito is compiling.
You could also add owner of Wowees flour tortilla tacos, and resurrector of the old Barrel House Bar in downtown Brownsville to that growing list of accomplishments.
In his latest reincarnation, Gavito has teamed up with his cousin Mike Hernandez III, the force behind the messianic OP 10.33 organization whose stated aims is to eradicate poverty in Brownsville by October 2033 (OP 10.33, get it?), to provide the front lines in the battle against the Zika virus and to erect a chemical barrier and prevent it from making its way toward to the rest of valley.
To that end, Gavito was making the rounds in the low-income areas of downtown Brownsville thbis weekend assisted by the St. Joseph Academy Bloodhound football team handing out cans of mosquito repellant to surprised residents. At about $4 a can, it means that cousin Hernandez might have plunked $4,000 for the 1,000 cans if he didn't get a discount at Sam's.
Somehow (we didn't ask how) he got the football team members to volunteer and pass them out.
Gavito told a local broadcaster that he chose this area to pass out the nearly one thousand cans because he knows finances are tight.
"These cans cost four dollars each. So you can't get them with food stamps," Gavito said.
"These cans cost four dollars each. So you can't get them with food stamps," Gavito said.
"That's the last thing they're going to buy and if it rains, that's the first thing they're going to need, so I think it's very important to get the message out," he added.
How he knew that the people who got the repellant were on food stamps is beyond us. Maybe he knows the census tract statistics by heart, or something.
In a previous lifetime I used to work at the Brownsville Herald with Gavito's uncle Oscar Castillo who told us his nephew was going to get in trouble with his facile statements.
That proved to be true after George found himself as the Cameron County Sheriff's Dept.'s poster boy during the Mark Kilroy murder investigation involving the satanista cult headed by Adolfo Constanzo outside of Matamoros that also captured "witch" Sara Aldrete.
That proved to be true after George found himself as the Cameron County Sheriff's Dept.'s poster boy during the Mark Kilroy murder investigation involving the satanista cult headed by Adolfo Constanzo outside of Matamoros that also captured "witch" Sara Aldrete.
All that is behind him now and – unscathed and still a free man carrying a little more weight and graying sideburns – he's back home teaming up with cousin Mike III to push back the frontiers of ignorance, corruption and injustice and to take a swipe at the pesky Zika virus in his spare time.
"Hey, buddy, you got to help out," George told us recently. "We went all over passing them out."