Humboldt County Sheriff Angel Cardenas (left) and his younger brother, Morrill County Sheriff Milo Cardenas (right), both serve their counties from more than 900 miles apart.
Despite being almost 1,000 miles apart the majority of the year, Humboldt County Sheriff Angel Cardenas and his brother, Morrill County (Nebraska) Sheriff Milo Cardenas remain close. It’s not every day that two brothers from the same hard-working family in Winnemucca are able to climb the ranks and both become leaders in local law enforcement.
“Hard work always pays off,” said Angel. “It’s what’s paid off for us and it’s not too often that there’s two Sheriffs in the same family.”
Every year for the Fourth of July the pair and their families get together in Winnemucca to celebrate the holiday and catch up, along with their two other brothers and four sisters.
Milo and his family travel roughly 13 hours from Morrill, Nebraska by car and some of their other siblings and relatives travel even further from other states such as Florida and Arizona to make it back to their hometown, according to the pair.
Growing up as the two oldest brothers — just two years apart — they and their oldest sister worked hard to help take care of their younger siblings while their parents both worked two jobs.
“We come from basically nothing but have worked hard for what we have,” said Angel.
Back in their teenage years, Angel and Milo would attend morning and evening sports practices, school, and work until as late as midnight at the local McDonalds, doing their homework during breaks.
Compared to the long days of landscaping work that they did when they were younger, the eight -hour shifts with breaks and air conditioning at McDonalds, “was heaven”, said Angel.
After graduating from Lowry High School, Angel chose to stay home close to family in Winnemucca and worked a few different jobs until he was hired on with local law enforcement , a career that has since spanned more than two decades. Milo joined the marines and then felt like he was also being pulled toward a career in law enforcement.
Always having a uniform to wear has “made it easy to pick out clothes every morning,” Milo joked.
Although the work can be similar, the geographical differences the brothers face are considerable. Humboldt County is almost 10,000 square miles and one of only 17 counties in Nevada, while Morrill County is considerably smaller and one of 93 counties in Nebraska.
Milo said his county has very similar laws and has many of the same “headaches.”
Some of these headaches include staffing and finding qualified candidates for the job, but both Angel and Milo agreed that the work is hard but is also rewarding and they each want to help people they work with to progress and rise up the chain of command just as they did.
Both remain “hands-on” leaders and still like to go on calls and help out in their departments not only to escape the large amount of desk-work that comes with the job — which can be pretty tedious — but also to be invested in their communities.
“I do still go out there on calls when the deputies are busy," said Milo. "That’s one thing that I know about my office, a lot of them like to see that you’re not just in an office chair all day and you like to go do things and you get more respect from people that way."
Angel, serving his first term, was elected out of four total candidates and hopes to fulfill more terms after this current term. Milo is currently serving his fourth term after being elected out of six candidates and tying with a final constituent.
According to Milo, he and the other candidate broke the tie by drawing cards and the nine of hearts over his opponent’s six of spades.
Thus began his career as the first Hispanic sheriff in Morrill County and the goal of becoming the longest running sheriff, serving five terms.
“When we leave [our counties], we want to leave [them], with better leaders than even what we were," said Angel. "We want to put better leaders in our place so they can run the counties better than we did…we always want to leave this a better place than we found it."