Star Special Reports

HARLINGEN - Diego Rivas-Soto's hometown is so small that every man rises before dawn and walks down to the river to make adobe bricks out of clay and straw for about $5 a day.The village is a cluster of about 10 homes a mile or so outside of San...... Full story

A new generation of Winter Texans making its way to the Rio Grande Valley promises to shake up old perceptions and rewrite the way business is done.This is the generation of the baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964. They are younger and more...... Full story

After the end of World War II, motorists hitched up roomy travel trailers behind V-8-powered cars with fastbacks and turtlehulls for road trips across America. Postwar prosperity, cheap gasoline and paid vacations made travel a seemingly limitless...... Full story

Four decades ago, a nightmarish stop at a run-down trailer park drove Hank Stanley to launch a business that turned the Rio Grande Valley into the headquarters of  Winter Texans. Down on his luck, Stanley pulled his old trailer into a Houston...... Full story

Since they began coming here in the 1930s, Winter Texans have provided one of the Rio Grande Valley's greatest economic engines.Retirees seeking refuge from icy Northern winters spend an average of four months of the year here, pumping as much as...... Full story

Game Warden Will Plumas expected to see extensive damage from Hurricane Ike, but admits he was stunned by how bad things were."It was more than what I expected," he said. "There were places that looked like they had been bulldozed. It's funny; there...... Full story

The Rio Grande Valley's ocelot population could be getting some new blood.An idea is being floated to bring ocelots from Tamaulipas, Mexico, to diversify a shallow gene pool.Cameron County ocelots are related to each other because their population...... Full story

Years ago, Harlingen physician Rick Bassett sold his property on South Padre Island and created the home of his dreams in Treasure Hills.With a cracked foundation in the two houses he purchased on a cul-de-sac, Bassett decided to combine the two...... Full story

As ranch hands measured the immense cat Reynaldo Ramirez had just shot on San Jose Ranch in 1946 near Olmito, little did they realize they had witnessed the passing of an era.The 7-foot-long, 200-pound feline was the last jaguar documented in the...... Full story

Sgt. Jose Lopez stood only 5-feet-4 and weighed 135 pounds. But on Dec. 17, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, he was a giant of a man for Company K.In what was called a "seemingly suicidal" mission, Lopez killed at least 100 Germans while...... Full story

In the small hours of Aug. 9, 1964, the family of Medal of Honor recipient Billy Harrell arrived home after a trip to the New York World's Fair.Harrell's 9-year-old son Gary bounded out of the cab while his mother Olive and sister Christie, 11, got...... Full story

When Alfredo Gonzalez was 9 years old, he watched John Wayne war movies.As a teenager, the Edinburg native worked in the fields picking crops. He played football and followed the high school basketball team.He dreamed of going to college so he could...... Full story

HARLINGEN - When Carolina Villarreal gazes out the window into her back yard, she often wonders about the man who lives in a tent on the other side of her fence.Villarreal has seen the man dwelling there next to a drainage ditch for about a year....... Full story

Barbara Stanzler wanted to leave her dog at a local animal shelter after worrying that the animal was too strong for her to handle."But I couldn't do it," Stanzler said. "I was just taken by him."Stanzler, 58, has owned her pit bull, Bandit, for...... Full story

LA FERIA � One Minnesota family is grateful for the actions of a Good Samaritan in Nuevo Progreso. When Winter Texans Olaf and Alice Grimsbo of Grand Rapids, Minn., went to the border town south of the Rio Grande on Dec. 6 for shopping and a visit...... Full story

Oct. 19, 2011 Migratory Bird Report No. 8 Weekly migratory bird hunting reports are posted from early September through early February. North Zone Dove: The North Zone season closes at sunset Oct. 23. The season has been fair at best, probably...... Full story