San Angelo in spotlight

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Like a teenage wallflower suddenly shoved onto the homecoming queen stage during the high school dance, the unassuming town of San Angelo found itself in the national spotlight because of April's FLDS raid.

Accordingly, she straightened her dress, smiled sweetly and stepped further into the glare, extending a welcome with grace.

In the process, she won a few hearts.

Eldorado, home to the YFZ Ranch, is 45 minutes away from San Angelo, but there was no place in small Schleicher County to handle the 400-plus children taken into state custody in the nation's largest-ever child custody case.

San Angelo took the children and mothers on in stride and shouldered the ensuing chaos with nary a blink.

And even as the Texas child custody case appears to be unraveling, San Angelo continues on as the heartbeat of the controversy, playing host to Friday's hearing in which Judge Barbara Walther refused to sign an order outlining conditions for the children to return home. An appeals court and the Texas Supreme Court have ordered that the children be returned, ruling that Walther and Child Protective Services overstepped their authority in sending more than 400 children — and apparently some young adults — into foster care.

The city, like others across the country, is made up of the things it is and the things it is not.

San Angelo is baseball, wide streets, large oak trees and tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants. It is not oil fields, bustle, blaring horns and impatience.

It is all about Texas boogie, two-step, Southern-fried hospitality and squirrels that play among the birds on the lawn of the Tom Green County Courthouse.

San Angelo is about a controversial judge with a Geena Davis-drawl and a dry sense of humor, three lakes and once being hailed as the mohair capital of the world.

Councilman Jon Mark Hogg, who grew up in a big city, said he moved to San Angelo to get away from those things that it is not: crowded, hostile, crime-ridden.

"It's got that small-town feel to it," he said. "That sense of community that comes from being in a smaller place. And I love the five-minute rush hour."

'Friendly Texans'