Rebecca Walters Retires from TJJD

Rebecca Walters began her career at Texas Youth Commission as a fresh-out-of-college intern at the Giddings State School in 1991 and rose to become the director of Youth Placement and Program Development for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department.

Walters, who retired in March, was known as an innovator at TJJD and TYC, having worked on developing agency efficiencies and responsivity to youth needs in many capacities, including 10 years working across divisions directly on those specific issues. She helped improve leadership and succession planning, case management and treatment models.

Recently she served as project manager of the Youth in Custody Practice Model (YICPM), a wide-ranging effort to assure the agency’s full alignment with national best practices. She also helped lead the Racial and Ethnic Disparities (RED) Work Group, which has generated new strategies to counter racial and ethnic disparities among youth and employees.

Walters served in several capacities at TJJD/TYC, starting as a caseworker at Giddings working with sex offenders and including two years as superintendent at the since-closed Al Price Juvenile Correctional Facility.

“Folks who’ve never run a facility have no idea how challenging it is. The pace is brutal and although people say ‘it’s just business,’ I learned that everything is personal,” Walters said. “The current facility administrators have my utmost respect and admiration.”

Colleagues credited her personal style – discerning, down-to-business, quietly persistent and a good listener – for her success in leadership.

Walters herself credited her parents with encouraging exploration and innovation, Walters said at her retirement party at Central Office on March 23.

 

Teresa Stroud, senior director of State Programs and Facilities, who worked as Walters supervisor for a time, said she admired Walters for her ability to see a situation from all sides and her mentoring of and indefatigable loyalty to the youth and fellow employees.

“She just showed up and got it done,” Stroud said.  

“This agency is better because of Rebecca’s extraordinary contributions,” said COO Chelsea Buchholtz.  “Her knowledge base, diligence and creativity are unmatched.”

Walters said that she considers her most important work to be when she helped develop and coordinate treatment services for the Capital Offender Treatment Program (COTP) at Giddings. Walters said she is eternally grateful to that team, her co-therapist Frank Soto, Tami Coy and Maxine Cooper.

At Giddings, she learned that redemption was possible for offenders, but not always in the cards. She recalled the words of Donna Durocher, who told her “if you want to take credit for the kid’s successes, you’d better be prepared to take responsibility for their failures.”

Walters was a founding member in 1999 of the Department of Sentenced Offender Disposition, along with TYC’s Leonard Cucolo and Stan DeGerolami, whom she praised as “two of the finest men with whom I’ve ever worked.” The three formalized the process for transfer of juvenile determinate sentenced offenders to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) based on the determinate sentencing law effective January 1, 1996. 

Leonard and his wife, Lynn, “basically adopted me when I moved to Texas at age 22. I spent many holidays and weekends eating their food,” Walters said. And DeGerolami helped convince her to stay at TJJD back in the 1990s.

Walters has been a nominee for several awards, such as the Governor’s Award for Volunteer Service (1997-2003) and the Outstanding Women in Texas Government (1997 and 2015) and the  Amador Rodriguez Juvenile Correctional Administrator of the Year (2017).

At her retirement event, she thanked many friends and colleagues for helping her along the way, including Chip Walters, a colleague for many years, who later became her husband.

Chip Walters, director of Operational Analysis and Facility Support, also has left TJJD, for a second time. He had returned to the agency four years ago, after previously retiring from TJJD/TYC after 27 years in many jobs -- JCO, caseworker, director of security, director of facility operations, assistant superintendent and superintendent.

“It’s been really fun,” Rebecca Walters said to the gathered crowd. “I hope you’ll be kind to one another.”

Chip Walters jokes during Rebecca Walters’ retirement party; Teresa Stroud looks on.