Former City Councilman Robbie Waters has coronavirus, is fighting for his life
Robbie Waters, an old soldier of Sacramento, has faced down tough challenges in his life before. But now the 84-year-old former county sheriff, former Sacramento Police detective and the last Republican to serve on the Sacramento City Council, is battling COVID-19.
Waters entered an ICU on Monday because he was having difficulty breathing. He may have to go on a ventilator. Waters’ family has been told to hope for the best, but not to rule out the worst.
“If he goes on a ventilator, it’s a hard task for someone his age,” said Judie Waters, Robbie’s wife of 60 years.
The next few days will be critical. I’m not including where Waters is being treated because he needs to rest. The last three weeks of his life have been excruciating.
On June 30, Waters lost his balance and fell in his Greenhaven home. The fall fractured in his hip. He survived surgery just fine, his family said. Waters was sent to a skilled nursing facility and seemed to be on the mend.
On July 13, Waters learned he had COVID-19.
The family is still trying to determine how Waters contracted the virus, though family members say they may never know. Waters’ health deteriorated and he had to go to the ICU on Monday. Because of the coronavirus, Waters hasn’t been able to see his family since his fall. They spoke by phone every day until Monday.
“He’s handling it the best he can,” Judie Waters said. “We’ve got a lot of prayers going. A lot of people care.”
Some of Waters’ children have flown here from out of town in recent days. He has three kids and is a grandfather. The family began informing close friends on Monday that Robbie was in a tough spot.
Waters history: fighting odds
The situation is scary, but it is not the first time that Waters has been isolated because of illness. When he was a student at Kit Carson Junior High School, Waters was hospitalized. His family feared he had polio and would be confined to a wheelchair for life. He recovered and ran track and played football at Sacramento High School.
Waters rose through the ranks at the Sacramento Police Department and has been written about many times by past Bee colleagues. Waters was the cop who transported Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme to jail after she tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford on the grounds of the state Capitol.
That was 1975, the same year Waters received the Sacramento Police Department Silver Medal of Valor for his actions during and after a shooting at a south Sacramento shopping center. He was a homicide lieutenant, and ran internal affairs. He was a local celebrity and supremely confident.
With no experience of running a department, he ran for county sheriff in 1982 and won. As I wrote in 2018: “We understand now how myopic and closed-off the sheriff’s department can be and that Waters took over that department is remarkable in retrospect. He was an outsider who had never so much as been a captain. And then there he was: Sheriff Waters.”
But the pressure of battling internal opposition led him to have a few too many drinks one day in 1984 and Waters – the sheriff – got popped for DUI. A proud, tough guy was embarrassed. Waters lost his re-election bid to Glen Craig in 1986. He was a one-term sheriff but he wasn’t done.
Legacy and fate
In 1994, Waters ran and won a seat on the Sacramento City Council, representing the Pocket-Greenhaven area. Even then, being a Republican was an oddity on a council that reliably leans blue.
Waters served for 16 years and was the only Republican on the council the entire time. He very likely could go down as the last Republican to serve elective office in the city limits of Sacramento.
The city library in the Pocket-Greenhaven area bears his name. Waters is a big personality, a self-made man who was born and raised in a city that changed profoundly in his lifetime.
When I think of Robbie Waters, I think of a Sacramento that is fading as it grows larger and more complex. The times that I would stop by Waters’s old Pocket-area frame shop to gossip about city politics seem like a long time ago, even though it’s only been 10 years since he left the council.
So much has happened in that time, so much has changed, so many of the old landmarks have disappeared. If I know Robbie Waters, and I do, I know he’d say he wants to stick around a while.
He loves Sacramento and wants to see what’s next. I hope he’ll get that chance and that COVID-19 will be one more hurdle Waters will clear in a full life of a man who never counted himself out.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 11:51 AM.
