SPC Samuel Villa-Smith looked out over Lake Meredith – near the town of Fritch, about 35 miles north of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle – with a pensive gaze. He clutched the only photo he has left of both he and his father, who died from an overdose in 2016.
“My father taught me everything I know about fishing and camping at this exact spot,” SPC Villa-Smith said. “The last time I was here with him, I was 7 years old and found a Native American spearhead. My father had us turn it into the museum because it was the right thing to do. Memories like that remind me that he was a good man; he was just overcome by his addiction.”
SPC Villa-Smith, a Soldier with the 1st Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment, Texas Army National Guard, was chosen in 2018 to lead Civil Operations in the Panhandle region with the Texas National Guard Joint Counterdrug Task Force.
The Panhandle, slightly larger in size than West Virginia, is a region rich in oil fields, agriculture and wind turbines, nestled among miles and miles of plains and geological formations like the Palo Duro Canyon.
For Panhandle natives like SPC Villa-Smith, the region is also known as a high-intensity drug trafficking area. Amarillo was ranked 13th among the top 25 cities in the United States for opioid abuse, according to a 2016 report by Castlight Health, a health care information company.
The Drug Enforcement Agency’s National Clandestine Laboratory Register indicated three of the top 11 counties in Texas for meth labs were in the Panhandle.
“This region is my home, where everything is for me: family, churches, schools,” SPC Villa-Smith said. “Civil Ops provides me with the opportunity to help fight this enormous battle that is taking this community over. This community has struggles with meth, cocaine, heroin, prescription addiction and alcoholism.”
As a Civil Operator, SPC Villa-Smith will coach, train, facilitate, lead and support coalitions and community-based organizations to impact substance abuse in his region.
For SPC Villa-Smith, the Counterdrug mission is personal. “Growing up with my father like that was a world of terror and a world of constant heartache seeing him sell everything he had to get his next fix,” he said. “It destroyed all of us.”
SPC Villa-Smith, who enlisted in 2011, said his father’s experience with addiction is what motivated him to come back and contribute to Amarillo and the Panhandle region.
On Villa-Smith’s birthday in 2016, he received the phone call that his father had died of an overdose.
“You never think it will happen until it happens to someone you love, then you’ll wish that somebody had been involved,” he said. “Drugs affect so many of us.”
Not only is SPC Villa-Smith invested in impacting his community, but he is also pursuing master’s degrees in software engineering and business administration, with a focus in finance. These degrees, he says, will enrich his knowledge for every aspect of his Counterdrug duties.
“This is my passion, to assist in the reduction of demand and fighting drugs on the street today,” he said.
By 1LT Nadine Wiley De Moura, Texas National Guard
