Rocky’s Road to Recovery

Rocky, a 2-year-old Belgian Malinois, works as a Tactical K-9 for the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS). On January 15, 2025, just a few months after finishing training, Rocky was tasked with finding a dangerous suspect in Houston, TX—who had shot and killed Brazoria County Sheriff’s Deputy Jesus Vargas earlier that day. Rocky is trained to locate suspects by tracking and other means. A small tactical team decided to conduct searches near the original shooting. Rocky found the suspect hiding in a dumpster and jumped in to apprehend him.

That is when the suspect fired his weapon, hitting Rocky twice. Rocky caught the suspect, but in doing so, he took one bullet to the neck and another in his nose. While law enforcement officers neutralized the suspect, Rocky was carried to a spot where he was airlifted to Westbury Animal Hospital.

The hospital had pre-established protocols for K-9 teams, ensuring the vets were prepared to triage and treat Rocky. He went into surgery, and it was determined that the bullets did not hit any of his vital organs, and one had narrowly missed his spine. After surgery, Rocky remained at the hospital to ensure his recovery went well. Two days later Rocky was released from the hospital and went home with his handler—who stayed at his side during all this—to rest and recover.

Outside of the hospital, the narrative was clear: Rocky is a hero. He was able to find the suspect, alert the Deputy US Marshals with him, and be the first line of attack in apprehending a violent, armed suspect.

“Rocky saved lives, he saved lives of deputies,” said T. Michael O’Connor, U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of Texas. “While that day was a tragedy for all of us in law enforcement with the loss of Deputy Vargas, it likely could have gone worse had Rocky not been there. He is a hero.”

This was echoed by the city on April 16, 2025, when Rocky was recognized at the Crime Stoppers Houston’s Heroes Awards Luncheon. He was awarded the Johnny Klevenhagen Award recognizing heroism in law enforcement. This represents just how valuable an asset Rocky, and other K-9 teams, are in fighting violent crime as they go out to work and save lives. Rocky is the first K-9 to ever receive this award.  

Everyone—from the city of Houston to his coworkers—is proud and grateful for Rocky, but he was merely doing his job, what he’s trained to do. The USMS Canine (K-9) Operations program provides dedicated protective, investigative, and enforcement K-9 support to US Marshals Service missions. Rocky went into that dumpster to do his job, to protect people.

After leaving the hospital, Rocky went home with his family to rest and spend time playing with his family and just being a dog while healing. Once healed physically, Rocky still had to be cleared mentally. He had to pass testing after one week of training which created high stress scenarios to see if he was fit to go back to work. Rocky passed all these scenarios easily and was given a clean bill of both physical and mental health. The team he works with, the K-9 trainers, and his handler all agreed that just one month after the shooting, Rocky was ready to get back to work.

For the past few months, Rocky has been back on the job as usual. He has worked on multiple searches and apprehensions with both the USMS Special Operations Group and the Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Task Force. He is back to his normal day to day life and living it to the fullest.