Heinrich was more than family

"He was family," Jack Espinosa said of his old friend and boss, former Hillsborough County Sherriff Walter Heinrich, who died Monday.

There was a pause, and he added, "No, he was closer than that. It's hard to explain.

"The first time I saw Walt he was a beat cop and I was working at the old Brass Rail strip joint at the corner of Franklin and Jackson, where I was the emcee and did a comedy routine. I think if anyone had told me that one day I was going to end up working for a cop who looked like Dick Tracy, I would have said they were crazy. But I did, and there was no finer or straighter guy I have ever known. He changed that department and made it as good a law enforcement department as there is in the country."

All-around pro

Let me throw in a few words about Espinosa, who was a professional comedian in Florida and Cuba, and is the funniest man I have met. Among a hundred other careers, he was my fencing coach in high school. He is an emcee at all sorts of events. He has been a janitor, assistant county administrator and author of the delightful "Cuban Bread Crumbs."

For more than a dozen years, Espinosa was the public information officer for the sheriff's office. "When Walt hired me," Espinosa says, "he said the most important thing was to be a straight shooter and to hold nothing back from the press, even if it was damaging to his department. He meant it.

"You know, here was a guy you didn't want to mess with. I remember I was working a place called the Club 22 in the old Tampa Bay Hotel. It was a strip club. Anyhow, this was in the early '50s, and they had booked Cab Calloway to come in and do a show.

A real bouncer

"I was doing my act, and then I stood off to the side. It still wasn't all that common to have black entertainers in front of a white audience. There were these two guys down near the front and they were acting badly, shouting racial slurs and just being jerks.

"So in comes 'El Aleman,' which means 'The German,' and that was Walt's nickname in those days. He had this slow, droopy kind of walk, and he sauntered up to where the two were being offensive. I could see him trying to talk to them and convince them to calm down, but I could tell they weren't stopping.

"Suddenly, it must have been one-sixteenth of a second, he reached down and knocked their heads together. He picked both of them up and hauled them out. The club was on the second floor, and I could hear them bouncing down the stairs. By the way, it turned out they were cops from Polk County."

Espinosa and Heinrich were supposed to be together with a small group last Saturday. "I'd stood him up a couple of weeks ago and he gave me a hard time. Saturday night he didn't show up, and I called on Sunday to give him a hard time."

Walt Heinrich was a lot of things. He was recognized as a good administrator who worked to keep his department up to date.

My strongest impression was in the last few years, as he dealt with the devastating illness of his wife, Phyllis. He would insist she still go out and enjoy life, and he treated his love of 61 years with respect and a kindness that was stirring to watch. He never really recovered from her death. Walt Heinrich was a fine public servant, and a better man.