The Hide-and-Seek Championships of Lyon County
Some forms of government in this country seem designed for no purpose other than testing a citizen's patience. I have spent enough years filling out paperwork to conclude that a man can lose his faith, his dignity, and his afternoon while trying to satisfy a clerk armed with a rubber stamp. Yet there remains one category of paperwork that society has a particular interest in seeing completed correctly, and that is the paperwork required of registered sex offenders.
Now, I am not a lawman. My qualifications for detective work are so poor that I once spent 20 minutes searching for my eyeglasses before discovering I was looking through them.
Had I been elected sheriff, crime would flourish from pure gratitude. Nevertheless, even I understand that if the law requires a fellow to report where he lives and what vehicle he drives, the ideal strategy is not to treat those requirements as optional suggestions.
The latest chapter in this curious drama unfolded in Yerington when a father reported a troubling encounter involving his child and a stranger who had stopped his vehicle along North Highway 95A. The father, being one of those increasingly rare citizens who still pays attention to his surroundings, found the interaction unsettling enough to investigate further.
In an age when many people cannot remember their own passwords but can recite the batting averages of players from 1987, the father did something remarkable: he checked the local sex offender registry. There he found a familiar face staring back at him.
It must have been one of those moments when a man's suspicions receive official confirmation and immediately become considerably less enjoyable. Deputies investigated and identified the suspect as 78-year-old Rolando Ramierez.
The investigation determined that Mr. Ramierez was operating a vehicle that had not been listed on his registration paperwork, which, in the highly specialized world of sex offender compliance, is rather like trying to play poker while forgetting to mention you brought an extra deck of cards. The sheriff's office arrested him and escorted him to the Lyon County Jail.
I imagine the conversation was brief, for there are only so many ways a deputy can ask why a vehicle wasn't registered before the answer begins sounding increasingly creative.
As if one lesson in administrative accountability were not enough, Lyon County offered a second installment only days earlier in Fernley. Deputies investigating an unrelated matter encountered several individuals living in a vehicle parked near Walmart, a crossroads of commerce, convenience, and human misfortune in modern America.
Among those contacted was Matthew Ryan Villafane, a registered sex offender recognized by a deputy who happened to serve on the Sheriff's Office Sex Offender Task Force. It struck me as an unfortunate coincidence, rather like attempting to hide from a fisherman by climbing into his boat.
As investigators looked further, they discovered that Villafane had allegedly been changing residences around Fernley without updating his registration. They also determined he had failed to register the vehicle in which he was living.
One begins to suspect that paperwork was not his favorite hobby. The investigation revealed that he had last registered in May and had since moved among multiple locations without reporting the changes as required.
It was a bold strategy, though history shows that bold strategies often fail when they depend entirely upon nobody noticing. He was arrested on a felony charge for violating sex offender registration requirements and transported to jail without incident.
The phrase "without incident" always amuses me. Being arrested and taken to jail seems like a fairly significant incident, but law enforcement has a talent for understatement that would make an English butler proud.
