The untold story of Jim McIngvale, the complex man behind Houston’s famous Mattress Mack

Reporting by Sarah Smith, Nicole Hensley, R.A. Schuetz, Megan Fan Munce, Jeremy Blackman and Matt Young

Perhaps the most startling thing Mattress Mack will tell you about himself: He is an introvert.

Yes, that Mattress Mack. The jump-in-the-air-to-save-you-money Mattress Mack, the multimillion-dollar sports betting Mattress Mack, the Mattress Mack who fake-fought Muhammad Ali and made a movie with Chuck Norris. The Mattress Mack who went viral with an expletive-laden rant after an Astros World Series game; the Mattress Mack who was subsequently rendered into the chains-and-bandana-wearing “Gangster Mack” meme. The Mattress Mack who served as grand marshal for Houston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade and who filed a high-profile lawsuit seeking records in search of possible improprieties in Harris County’s 2022 election.

In his own words, Mattress Mack is a huckster, a self-promoter, a man born “under the astrological sign of P.T. Barnum.”

In the words of his wife and daughter, Jim McIngvale — the man behind the TV persona — is not. 

“I don’t think that, socially, he feels that comfortable,” said Linda, his wife of 40-plus years. “Maybe it’s because he just works all the time. So he only knows work.”

Pretty much everyone in Houston knows Mattress Mack because of his work. Maybe you grew up watching the low-budget commercials in which Mack, surrounded by furniture, whipped crumpled bills from his back pocket and did a little jump and promised Gallery Furniture could save you money. Maybe you saw him waving from a float in the World Series parade. Maybe you bought a mattress from one of his three Gallery Furniture locations. If you’re among that contingent, you’ll know he believes you are now having the best sleep of your life. There’s a chance he even called you personally to make sure.

MORE FROM THIS SERIES: 9 surprising facts about Jim ‘Mattress Mack’ McIngvale, Houston’s legendary furniture salesman

While Mack’s legend maintains itself with anecdotes retold almost verbatim, the man himself is far more complicated than a myth or a meme. His existence is a steady push-and-pull of humble acts and flashy bravado underpinned by a relentless ambition apparent since his teenage years. He is driven by what he says is a deep fear of failure. He is equal parts pious churchgoer and blustering carnival barker. He has somehow managed to keep an everyman persona even while sponsoring bowl games and breaking bidding records at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. He bought Princess Diana’s diamond and pearl necklace-and-earring-set and Elvis’ 1956 Lincoln Continental, but he drives a Chevy Tahoe that once had its driver’s side mirror held on by half a roll of clear tape. At least three people have tattoos of his face.

“I don’t know of any other furniture salesman on planet Earth whose face is tattooed on people’s arms,” said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Mack’s friend for more than a decade.  

Like many successful entrepreneurs, he’s drawn his share of conflict. His ads about competitors once got him kicked out of the Better Business Bureau. After he invested in Thoroughbreds, a number of his horse training staff were fired or quit. His store was sued in the ’90s over allegations that it was permissive of ongoing sexual harassment. But he’s also been celebrated for acts of service — donating furniture to low-income families at Christmas and handing out care packages to seniors during the worst of the pandemic. As floodwaters rose during Hurricane Harvey, Mack opened his stores to waterlogged Houstonians in need of shelter. 

After decades in the public eye, the self-proclaimed introvert has put himself in the spotlight more than ever this past year. He launched his own sports news site. He did an about-face on a controversial issue in the Texas Legislature. He catapulted himself into a hotly contested Harris County race and its bitter aftermath, his political ads about crime rates becoming nearly as pervasive as those hawking his furniture as he campaigned in prime time for his largely unknown candidate — whom he helped rocket to within 2 percentage points of the most powerful position in Harris County.

Mack has no regrets about diving into the fray on issues that could alienate customers or compromise his image as a unifier.

“All these people call, ‘Why are you doing that? You got a lot of money, live a good life’— screw this,” he said, sitting at a for-sale dining room table in one of Gallery’s showrooms, his white buzz cut hidden beneath a ballcap. “I think Benedict XVI said, ‘we’re not called to be comfortable; we’re called to be great.’ Big difference.”

Jim McIngvale is 72. He still feels the call to step in.

The man and the myth

Like any legendary figure, Mattress Mack has an origin story, one told and retold and massaged in each rendition, some details blurring and others cementing into canon. The genesis of Mattress Mack starts like this: Once upon a time (Feb. 11, 1951, to be exact), a baby named James was born to George and Angela McIngvale in the college town of Starkville, Miss. The family moved to Dallas when he was a child. George McIngvale worked in the insurance business; Angela McIngvale stayed home with Jimmy and his five siblings. (He didn’t give himself the nickname “Mack” until much later.) 

The McIngvale clan attended Sunday Mass and sent young Jim to Catholic schools. (Mack is still a man of strong faith: During a 2013 deposition over a contract dispute, he scribbled “Jesus loves you” to himself on a paper towel. He routinely goes to confession for what he jokingly calls his “many sins.”) 

He was a “really shy” teen, said fellow Bishop Lynch High School alumnus Steve Nugent — not exactly the obvious type to become a salesman. But, in a proclivity that stuck, he was a regular among a group of boys who went to one another’s houses to play poker. They all liked to bet. With well-off parents, Nugent said, Jimmy was “always betting heavy.”

MORE FROM THIS SERIES: Timeline: How Mattress Mack evolved from failed entrepreneur to Houston celebrity

Jim played first string on the football team for Bishop Lynch, one of a pair of linebackers known as the “Terror Twins” for their frequent tackles. (He would go on to warm the bench for the University of Texas at 6-foot-1 and 196 pounds and then play for the University of North Texas.) Fellow Terror Twin Carlos Palomo remembers “Jimbo” as a quiet kid who seldom raised his hand in class, a buddy who was “very focused on whatever it was he decided he would do” and who gave less-wealthy kids rides in his new Pontiac GTO and sometimes covered their tabs at 7-11 or Jack in the Box. Another high school friend, Craig Muessig, remembers leaving school on a rainy December day — after football season had ended — and seeing the future magnate running sprints on the track, alone.

“I mean, he was tough,” Muessig said. “And, as you might imagine, very intense.”  (At family holidays, his daughter Liz said, while the younger generation lounges, Mack works out for a two-hour stretch.) 

In May 1975, at 24, Jim McIngvale married Cynthia Potter, an Olympic diver. Helped along by his father’s contacts and money, he opened a chain of Nautilus health clubs in Dallas. They went belly-up by 1978. That same year, Potter served him with divorce papers that cited an unspecified “conflict of personalities.” She did not respond to requests for comment.

After the one-two failures of his marriage and business, he found a job sacking groceries at a convenience store in northeast Dallas. He disdained it. Then, in what would become a well-told chapter in the Mattress Mack legend, his boss fired him for having an attitude problem.

He sank into a depression and moved in with his parents, then his sister.

“When I was broke and unemployed I was miserable,” he recalled. “I felt sorry for myself and the world was against me and I couldn’t catch a break. Well, the reason was I was a jackass.” 

He was loafing at his sister’s in Dallas one Sunday when televangelist Oral Roberts came on screen. Don’t feel sorry for yourself, Mack remembers Roberts exhorting, go make something of yourself. 

So Jim McIngvale got a job selling furniture.

He loved it. He loved it so much he decided to open his own furniture business in Houston, a boomtown riding high on oil prices. He sat down with his then-girlfriend, Linda McCullough, who had worked at one of his doomed Dallas-area Nautilus clubs. He asked her to move with him to Houston.

Fine, Linda said. But only if he married her first.

He hesitated. Marriage wasn’t exactly top-of-mind. Then, as he likes to recount, he thought: Where could he find a better, cheaper employee? 

He said yes. His calculus would turn out to be right. He could not, their daughter Liz says, have succeeded without Linda. 

Their early days at Gallery were distinctly unglamorous. What’s now a behemoth boasting over 100,000 square feet of showroom space began in a north Houston lot of abandoned model homes and overgrown weeds. The newlyweds drove to and from Dallas to pick up inventory. They dragged furniture sets outside to display. Sometimes, they slept at the store.

When the oil industry teetered in 1983, Gallery’s revenues took a hit. Mack turned to TV. He bought enough studio time to make three 30-second TV spots. He tried a pitch in front of the camera, froze up; tried again, tripped over his lines. The clock ticked. 

The hour was late and Mack was desperate. On what he says was his very last take, Mack pulled the day’s receipts from his back pocket and proclaimed, “Gallery Furniture will SAVE. YOU. MONEYYYY!” 

The spot ran in March 1983. A local star was born.

Ballots and battles 

By his eighth year in the Bayou City, Mattress Mack believed he was ready for a bigger platform to peddle his ideas.

It was 1989, the year Stevie Ray Vaughan jammed with his brother during the “biggest party in history” at the Astrodome, when “Head of the Class” filmed an episode at the Johnson Space Center and James Carville was running Fred Hofheinz’s mayoral bid. Gallery was thriving. Mack’s ads  —  somehow voted both “Best Small Businessman in his Own Commercial” and “Worst Commercial” in the same poll — ensured his were among the best-known faces and voices in town. So when an at-large council member decided to run for Congress, Mack contemplated running to fill the seat. A successful council bid could be a stepping stone: In four to six years, he would run for mayor. 

He knew exactly how he’d govern. Just like at Gallery, “You focus on the customer.” The customers, in this case, would be taxpayers. 

In the end, Mack never ran for mayor. He never even ran for council. His almost-bid hit two snags: One, he’d have to stop appearing in Gallery ads. Two, he wasn’t eligible. He was surprised to learn he didn’t technically live within city limits. 

These days, Mack finds zero appeal in governing by committee. But even without his name on the ballot, he’s become a loud voice in local politics — particularly in the past year. During the Republican primary for the race to unseat incumbent Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, he endorsed the party’s eventual nominee, a military vet with Harvard business and law degrees and mother of two living in the Heights named Alexandra del Moral Mealer. Mealer says she’d never met Mack before driving out to the flagship store at 6006 North Freeway to make her pitch. As she talked, he got up, walked around, kept working. She wondered if her points were resonating at all. 

At the end of their hourlong talk, he suggested they cut an ad then and there. He gave her 30 minutes to write the script.

“I remember some of the employees kind of teasing me, ‘Are you nervous?’” she said. “I’m like, ‘Would you be nervous? Yes, I’m nervous.’”

That ad was the first of many. Mack got so involved in her race, Mealer said, that he’d call her up whenever he saw a headline he didn’t like and wonder aloud if they should cut another one.

He and Linda invested more than $870,000 in her campaign. Mack hadn’t donated to a single Republican or Democrat running for county judge or commissioner going back to 2008, the last year for which records are readily available. (He waved off a question about whether he donated to anyone vying for those positions before 2008: “I’m like a cat; I focus on the present.”) Three months after Mealer lost her bid, Mack sat in front of half a dozen microphones to announce he was suing the Harris County Election Administrator’s Office, accusing officials of withholding public records of the November 2022 election. 

“We run out of ballots; how hard is that?” Mack said later. “That’d be like me running out of friggin’ mattresses; you can’t do that.”

As to whether he considers Hidalgo’s win legitimate: “Let the facts speak for itself. I mean, it looks like she was, but turn it all up,” he said. “I don’t know. Show everything. Turn it over. Be transparent. Let the light shine upon it.” (Hidalgo called Mack a “furniture salesman” in her victory speech; he fired back with an ad in the Chronicle calling her a “sanctimonious bully.”) Hidalgo declined to comment. The litigation is ongoing.

Besides Mealer, Mack has given cash and nods to candidates at all levels. He’s backed Democrats such as Sylvester Turner and Kim Ogg, but his recent contributions have been to Republicans like Ted Cruz and Lauren Boebert and Donald Trump. He lent his voice to 1994 state district judge candidate Pat Lykos whom, like Mealer, he viewed as “tough on crime.” He got involved with the Tea Party during the movement’s heyday in the early 2010s and attended staff retreats with Cruz.

Mack says the issues he cares about — “crime, crime and crime” — transcend party politics. At the same time, many who know him peg him as a conservative who sometimes crosses party lines.  

“If God, duty, honor, country and family and community make me a conservative, I am,” Mack said. “But I just believe in the power of work.”

He does not believe, as he once read in a New York Times column, that bootstrapping is no longer possible in America. And crime concerns him so much, he said, that he tells Linda not to go to an ATM at night. He might just start carrying a gun.

Mack’s support for Mealer tracks with Republicans across the board who get behind candidates with increasingly fervent views on crime rates and policing, said Renee Cross, senior executive director of the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs. Jim McGrath, a former aide to George W. Bush and staff writer for the elder president Bush, said Mack hasn’t changed — rather, the county has.

“Harris County,” Mack said on a conservative talk radio program in February, “is a bastion of crime.” 

Mack can tell crime’s gotten bad, he says, because fewer people come to Gallery at night. (The local bump in violent crime during the pandemic was in sync with national trends; there were fewer violent crimes in Houston during 2022 than the year prior.) 

MORE FROM THIS SERIES: See all of Mattress Mack’s political donations, from Alexandra Mealer to Ted Cruz, in our database

Over the years, Mack has palled around with an array of high-profile politicians. He attended Astros games with the elder Bushes and sent George W. Bush a U.S. flag-inspired sofa after the 9/11 attacks. During Ted Cruz’s first bid for Senate, Heidi Cruz went through the same drive-to-the-store-and-make-your-pitch ritual as Mealer. Mack wrote the campaign a check on the spot (“Heidi can be very persuasive,” Cruz said). Now, the senator considers Mack a good friend: They bond over issues like religious liberty and free enterprise. They’re close enough to call each other, have dinner and text when one of them gets turned into a meme. 

“He and I have spent hours talking about the directions our country is going nationally,” Cruz said. “I’ll try to avoid putting words in his mouth, but I think we’re on the wrong track.”

Another high-profile politician who knows how to find Mack: former President Donald Trump. When Trump wanted a new mattress, he rang Mack and asked him to send something over. Longtime Gallery employee Jerry Burke drove a loaded Gallery truck to Florida in early March. Workers laid out the contents in the small ballroom at Mar-a-Lago: Two mattresses, two box springs, two adjustable bases. 

Trump, Burke says, kept everything. The ex-president sent him home with two signed MAGA hats: one for Burke and one for Mack. 

“MACK,” Trump wrote in thick black Sharpie beside his signature on the brim, “YOU ARE GREAT.”

The business of being Mack

The flagship store of Mack’s empire sits on a nondescript feeder road off of I-45 just over 7 miles north of City Hall or Minute Maid Park.

Walking in the door, it’s easy to forget Gallery is, as its name suggests, a furniture store. Inert raccoons play cards at a small tree-branch table; one raccoon in a purple party hat has a paw deep in a jar of creamy Jif peanut butter. A yellow, theater-style marquee proclaiming “WE NEED FREEDOM TO SHAPE OUR FUTURE … WE NEED PROFIT TO REMAIN FREE!” glitters over the entrance to a dimly lit room packed with recliners and TVs. One wall is covered with memorabilia from Mack’s horse racing ventures; another showcases his flood relief efforts. Nearly all the walls are plastered with motivational axioms — 

Rust ruins more tools than overuse does. 

Gallery’s break room has a full cafeteria where, Mack says, employees eat for free. No electronic devices are allowed in the break room. He likes the idea of people actually having conversations. 

What you are is God’s gift to you, what you make of yourself is your gift to God.

Mack’s perch at the counter, he says, lets him see the gamut of life: The people who come in to spend tens of thousands of dollars on furniture and the people who come in to ask for a 20.

Work is life’s greatest therapy. 

Everything at Gallery has been carefully organized to enthrall customers. It’s a zaniness that matches the persona Mack curated through years of wacky advertisements, though the spots have not always been kooky come-hithers: In 1994, the Better Business Bureau of Greater Houston and South Texas kicked him out, saying several of his ads disparaged competitors. Gallery rejoined the BBB in 2013 and held an A+ rating; this spring, after disputes over dues, Gallery is no longer accredited. 

“They’re good people, but I just don’t see any reason to pay them those membership fees,” Mack said. “They’re not as relevant as they used to be.”

The Mattress Mack persona is just as much a part of the business as the furniture. His face may have deep lines and he may walk with a slight stoop and he may be too old to jump in commercials, but his ears are as prominent as ever and he narrates commercials with the same auctioneer’s patter as in his early days. Mack is such an icon, said Gallery staffer Dusty Vandenberg, it once took him a full 31 minutes at Minute Maid Park to walk 50 yards from the Phillips 66 home run pump to the left field foul pole because so many people wanted to take pictures with him. He’s boosted his fame with promotions that invite customers to dabble in his world of wagers: Spend money on his furniture, and, if Mack’s team wins (or the price of oil rises or you pick the winning presidential candidate or whatever else Mack dreams up for you to bet on), you’ll get your purchase for free. Mack hedges the potential losses with high-dollar sports bets. And each bet — including Mack’s record-breaking $75 million collection on the Astros’ 2022 World Series victory — attracts enough coverage to ensure the gamble itself is a free ad. Cameras followed eagerly as Mack transported his World Series winnings in a red wheelbarrow from the trunk of a car to a waiting jet. He has already placed his next wager: $1.9 million on the Astros winning it all for the second year in a row.

Mack’s interests in opening a casino and legalizing sports betting in Texas have been well-documented. In 2021, he published an op-ed in the Chronicle saying it would bring jobs and revenue to Texas. So, when he came out two years later “1,000 percent against” a Republican-backed bill in the state Legislature that would allow mobile sports gambling, onlookers were baffled.

Mack, the self-professed “world’s most famous gambler,” argued against every point he’d made in its favor. The promised job creation? Oversold. The expected revenue for the state? Not true. The overall impact? Damaging to society.

He says the change of heart is “a personal thing,” and his wife reminded him that he’s “a compulsive gambler.” He says gambling should not be as easy as pulling your phone from your pocket and being forced to drive or fly to other states will keep people disciplined. 

But gambling — albeit illegally — is already as easy as whipping out your phone, said Carla Gustafson of the Texas Sports Betting Alliance. The alliance loves Mattress Mack, she said, but agrees to disagree with him.

Politics aside, Mack’s gimmicks, splashy bets and star appeal have served their purpose. With four decades in business, Gallery is ranked among the top 100 furniture retailers by industry publication Furniture Today. (Because the company is privately held, it doesn’t have to disclose any sales figures.) Beyond his focus on customer service, Mack’s real secret to success, as he’s parroted for 25-plus years: “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.” 

For a celebrity, Mack’s an easy man to find. Call the store — he’ll either pick up with a barked “Mack!” or an employee will transfer you over — or drive out to 6006 North Freeway. Don’t email. He doesn’t check it. Linda is equally available, managing the couple’s Club Westside in Briar Forest, west of Beltway 8. Westside started as a tennis club hosting tournaments for the likes of Andre Agassi, a club that Mack bought despite Linda’s misgivings it would be a moneysuck. It’s now a country club with pools, a lazy river, indoor courts and a small menagerie of flamingos, monkeys and giraffes. Linda, the less visible of the duo, hustles between bookkeeping at Gallery and managing the club. She knows she runs a risk when she talks about Mack or his work.

“Every time somebody interviews me and I give some input, Mack gets mad because he didn’t like what I said,” she said during a Thursday shift at Gallery. Mack, standing behind her, chuckled. 

After long workdays, the McIngvales quietly unwind at their Tanglewood home (a house that’s blurred on Google Street View), chatting about work and reading. While Linda prefers thrillers, Mack sticks to tomes on business, history or Catholicism.

Mack calls himself a “control freak.” There’s a reason certain types of people — military vets and former athletes — do well there, said Vandenberg. People at Gallery know to follow orders. The “hotshots” who think they know better than Mack, he said, don’t last long. 

Most employees appreciate his sense of humor: wry, impromptu one-liners delivered nearly under his breath in his rougher, non-TV voice. He’s also known to have a temper, a flaw he readily owns.

His employees say he never asks them to do a task he wouldn’t do himself, whether it’s calling a customer or picking up trash. He’s beloved for random acts of generosity: He’ll jet employees to playoff games or pay their medical bills.

There are employees who say they’d “run through a wall” for Mack, who say they won’t leave Gallery unless he does. 

Then there is Peggy Sam O’Neil. 

O’Neil is 67 and still ruminates on her days at Gallery Furniture. She spent years asking herself what she did wrong.

O’Neil worked in sales at Gallery in 1989, when she was 32, a single mother of two girls. A year later, she sued the store, saying several coworkers had sexually harassed her. Among the allegations: Employees swapped rumors she’d been sleeping with other salespeople. One employee told her a group of staff would “gang-bang her” at a deer lease where they would all go hunting, the suit says.  These incidents continued, she said, after she reported her coworkers. At least two workers were warned about making an “off-color remark with sexual overtones during a company sponsored meeting,” court documents show.

Gallery denied the allegations. The suit settled for $75,000, Mack said in a sworn statement in an unrelated case — about $152,400 in today’s dollars. Mack declined to comment beyond: “The results speak for themselves.”

O’Neil has watched Mack’s commercials and seen the accolades for his charitable efforts. She knows his work helps others, but she looks at it as opportunism. When she thinks of Mack, she thinks: “He bought himself Houston.”

Mack’s ubiquity is similarly painful for Deborah and Robert Youens. The Austin couple is shepherding a lawsuit that alleges Gallery Furniture infringed on the copyrights of their daughter Rachel’s business. Rachel is not a party in the lawsuit. Rachel is dead.

Rachel Youens opened The FOMO Factory, a pop-up immersive experience with Instagrammable nostalgia items like a cobalt ball pit and a wall full of cassette tapes, in the Galleria. Like Mack and Linda 40 years before, Rachel and her parents sometimes slept in the empty gallery space. But just before it opened, Rachel discovered what the suit identifies as an array of copyright infringements of her designs on display at Gallery Furniture. 

Gallery, Rachel’s parents say, hired an artist who replicated five of Rachel’s copyrighted pop-up installations from The FOMO Factory: the cassette tape wall, a crescent moon wall, a cupcake wall, a pinata wall, and a seesaw and pinwheel rainbow wall. The difference: His installations were free and drew in customers. Hers cost money.

Rachel was terrified, her parents said. She had sunk her life savings into The FOMO Factory. 

“She was so defeated, like, ‘I can’t fight against this, he’s the Houston hero,’” Deborah Youens said. “She felt like she was in a David and Goliath situation, but she didn’t have a slingshot.”

In the lawsuit, The FOMO Factory alleges that “these events had a deep and overwhelming effect on Rachel Youens. Tragically, on July 17, 2019, Rachel Youens ended her own life.” The suit, filed in 2021, is ongoing. (Gallery has denied each of her claims in court filings and moved to have the case dismissed. Mack declined to comment further.)

“This was a sad end to a pretty creative girl’s life,” Robert Youens said.

Now more than ever, the Youens can’t avoid seeing Mack in the news. It feels impossible to reconcile his public image with the way they feel he treated their daughter. They feel triggered every time. 

Working the counter

Mattress Mack stands behind the register at Gallery on an overcast Tuesday, flanked by signed posters of Astros players and small American flags and a miniature wooden cross with Seek courage and strength through Him carved on it. He traces his index finger down a sheet of paper on the counter and grabs the landline. As the customer’s phone rings to voicemail, Mack runs his lines like an auctioneer. 

“Hi Erica, this is Mack at Gallery Furniture, just calling to make sure Gallery Furniture did a good job delivering your furniture but most of all, Erica, I’m calling to tell you that Gallery Furniture sincerely appreciates your business. Thanks very much, have a good day.”

He switches to his cell and dials the next number on his list, one hand still on the landline. He tries to do at least 100 of these calls a day. The only thing that changes are the names.

Hi John, this is Mack at Gallery Furniture. Hi Miguel, this is Mack. 

One woman pushes another through the doors in a wheelchair. As a salesperson descends on them, Mack raises his hand in a hello. 

Hi Mr. Hernandez. Hi Michelle. Hi Matt.

He leaves the register to shoot one of his 30-second spots in front of a tan couch. Another couple flags him down. He stops. They like what he’s doing with the election, they say. Mack thanks the couple. He says, “Making progress.”

This is the place where Mack can be Jim and Jim can be Mack. It’s the place where his flamboyant celebrity memorabilia and over-the-top decor share space with coins and bills from a boy who wanted to help rebuild Gallery after a 2009 fire; where a thank you Mack McIngvale clock hangs on the same wall as a Gangster Mack timepiece. It’s a place where he can toil without fanfare and cut his classically eccentric ads. It’s where he pushes his promotions and visits with his grandchildren and raises a hand to every customer. It’s a store built around the loud persona of a reticent man with one of Houston’s most recognizable faces.

As he tells anyone who asks, he plans to die at the register of Gallery Furniture. If he does, he will die happy.

Credits

Reporting: Sarah Smith, Jeremy Blackman, Megan Fan Munce, R.A. Schuetz, Nicole Hensley and Matt Young

Visuals: Elizabeth Conley, Alexandra Kanik and Jill Karnicki

Production: Rebecca Hennes and Jordan Ray-Hart

Editing: Gabrielle Banks, Baird Helgeson and Chris Fusco

sarah.smith@houstonchronicle.com