Central Texas Biting Pests: The Bite You Never Felt

Sponsor Message: This episode of the Texas Current Podcast is brought to you by Liz Rich, mortgage broker. Thinking about buying a home in Georgetown, Round Rock, Cedar Park, or Leander? Then you need a mortgage expert who knows the market inside and out. Liz Rich with Edge Home Finance specializes in helping Central Texas families navigate the home financing process with confidence. Whether you're a first-time home buyer, moving up, refinancing, or exploring all of your loan options, Liz takes the time to educate her clients and find the right solution for their goals. To connect with Liz, visit the link in this episode's show notes. And be sure to tell her you heard about her on Texas Home Talk. Liz Rich, NMLS 1983319, Equal Housing Opportunity.

Tyler Brooks: Welcome back to the Texas Current Podcast. I'm Tyler Brooks.

Maddie Lawson: And I'm Maddie Lawson.

Maddie Lawson: Great to be back with you, Tyler.

Tyler Brooks: Maddie, before we do, anything else today, I really need to throw a number at you and our listeners.

Maddie Lawson: Okay, I'm ready.

Tyler Brooks: So there was this recent Texas A&M Citizen Science study, right? People submitted like almost 2,000 kissing bugs that they found around their property.

Maddie Lawson: Wow, that's a lot of bugs.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah. And out of all those submitted bugs, 63.3% carried the parasite that causes Chagas disease. Right. And here's the kicker. 10.5% of those bugs were collected literally inside people's homes.

Maddie Lawson: I mean, that completely reorients your perspective on what's hiding in your house.

Tyler Brooks: It really does. So uh if you were just joining us, you are stepping into part two of a three-part series.

Maddie Lawson: Yes, our big pest breakdown.

Tyler Brooks: Exactly. So in episode one, we talked all about the instant stingers, you know, the asps, the bees, the fire ants, the scorpions.

Maddie Lawson: The ones that demand your attention immediately.

Tyler Brooks: Right. Exactly. With those, there's absolutely zero mystery. You get stung, you know exactly what happened, and you know, you deal with it.

Maddie Lawson: But today, Tyler, we are changing gears completely. Today is all about the sneak attacks.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah, we are examining the delayed reaction pests of Central Texas. The sneaky ones. Right. These are the insects and arachnids, where you often, you know, you don't even feel the initial bite. Yeah. The consequences, whether we are talking about a medical emergency, a bizarre new allergy, or a systemic infection, they show up hours, days, or even decades later.

Maddie Lawson: Decades. It's just wild to think about.

Tyler Brooks: It is. And uh just as a quick heads up, we are saving the structural home destroyers, like termites and tree roaches, for episode three.

Maddie Lawson: Right. So today is strictly all about the delayed threats to your physical health.

Tyler Brooks: Exactly.

Maddie Lawson: And we want this exploration to be your uh your ultimate guide to knowing when a delayed symptom is just a passing annoyance and when it actually warrants a trip to the doctor.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah, because I mean people move here worried about rattlesnakes. And meanwhile, there's a bug on your patio named after kissing, and almost two-thirds of them are carrying a parasite.

Maddie Lawson: It's all about perspective, Tyler.

Tyler Brooks: So let's start right there on the patio, the kissing bug.

Maddie Lawson: Formally known as the triatomine bug.

Tyler Brooks: Right. So they are roughly penny-sized with a distinct, cone-shaped head, very thin legs, and they have this orange or red striping along the flattened edge of their abdomen.

Maddie Lawson: And you have to be careful because there are look-alikes out there, right? Like wheel bugs and leaf-footed bugs.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah, definitely. But the kissing bug, they get that friendly sounding name because they tend to bite people around the face and the lips while they sleep. Yeah, and it's a completely painless bite.

Maddie Lawson: Right, but uh the bite itself isn't actually what makes you sick.

Tyler Brooks: Okay, yeah, explain this part.

Maddie Lawson: Well, this is where the biology gets fascinating and honestly a little unsettling. These bugs carry a protozoan parasite called Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes Chagas disease. But the transmission doesn't happen through the bug saliva, it happens via their feces.

Tyler Brooks: Which is just such a bizarre mechanism.

Maddie Lawson: It really is.

Tyler Brooks: From what I understand, you know, the bug bites you to feed, and while it's feeding, it literally defecates on your skin.

Maddie Lawson: Yep, right on the skin.

Tyler Brooks: Then, because the bite might itch slightly afterward, you unconsciously scratch it in your sleep, rubbing that feces into the open bite wound or, you know, into a mucous membrane like your eye.

Maddie Lawson: That's exactly how the parasite enters the bloodstream. And Tyler, the delay on this disease is staggering.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah. How long are we talking?

Maddie Lawson: Well, the parasite doesn't just hang out in your blood. It actually burrows into your muscle tissue, specifically the heart.

Tyler Brooks: Oh, wow.

Maddie Lawson: Yeah. And it replicates incredibly slowly, essentially hiding from your immune system.

Tyler Brooks: So your body is basically fighting a low-level chronic war in your heart muscle for decades.

Maddie Lawson: Yes. Decades of chronic inflammation slowly replaces healthy heart muscle with scar tissue. Now, most infected people never develop complications, but for a minority, it eventually leads to severe gastrointestinal problems or significant cardiac damage like strokes and fatal arrhythmias 20 or 30 years after that single painless bite.

Tyler Brooks: Okay, Maddie, I have to step in here and apply some data to the fear factor.

Maddie Lawson: Please do. I know that sounds terrifying.

Tyler Brooks: Because I know if I'm listening to this and I hear that a 63% parasite rate is out there, I mean I am permanently sealing my doors.

Maddie Lawson: Right, right.

Tyler Brooks: But let's look at the actual human case data in Texas. Yeah. Because the reality is much less terrifying.

Maddie Lawson: Okay.

Tyler Brooks: What are the numbers? So from 2013 to 2023, there were only 273 reported Chagas cases in the entire state.

Maddie Lawson: Okay, that's really low.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah. And out of those, only 51 were locally acquired. The vast majority were acquired by people traveling internationally.

Maddie Lawson: Well, that's a crucial distinction, Tyler. While the disease is likely underreported, human transmission here is still genuinely rare.

Tyler Brooks: Exactly. But if we want to talk about where the immediate threat lies, we really have to talk about dogs.

Maddie Lawson: Oh, right.

Tyler Brooks: Canine Chagas is a highly significant veterinary problem in Texas. In that AM study, the highest density collection sites weren't living rooms. They were dog kennels.

Maddie Lawson: Oh wow. So outdoor dogs are the ones really in trouble.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah, outdoor dogs in the hill country are at a much higher risk, mainly because they're prone to actually eating the bugs, which, you know, ingests the parasite directly.

Maddie Lawson: Very true. Okay, so moving from a parasite that might quietly damage your heart over decades. Let's walk off the patio and into the brushy edges of the yard.

Tyler Brooks: Okay, what's next?

Maddie Lawson: We need to look at a bite that secretly rewires your immune system in a matter of months.

Tyler Brooks: The lone star tick.

Maddie Lawson: Yes. Amblyomma americanum.

Tyler Brooks: You can spot the adult female by a single distinct white dot on her back.

Maddie Lawson: Right. The namesake lone star.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah. And let's clarify the geography here, because they thrive from central Texas eastward. Places like New Braunfels down to the coast. Right. But as you push further west into the dry hill country, their numbers really drop off.

Maddie Lawson: But if you are in their zone, they are notorious for transmitting alpha-gal syndrome.

Tyler Brooks: Okay. I read the prep notes on alpha-gal syndrome, Maddie, and I'm genuinely struggling to understand the mechanics here.

Maddie Lawson: It's definitely weird.

Tyler Brooks: Like, how does a tick bite somehow rewire my immune system so that I can't eat a brisket?

Maddie Lawson: It sounds like science fiction, I know, but the biology makes sense once you break it down.

Tyler Brooks: Okay, walk me through it.

Maddie Lawson: So alpha-gal is a sugar molecule, galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose. It's naturally found in the tissues of almost all lower mammals, like cows, pigs, and deer.

Tyler Brooks: Okay.

Maddie Lawson: But humans don't have it. Now, ticks aren't born with this sugar, but during their larval or nymph stages, they feed on those mammals, and that sugar gets stored in the ticks, gut, and saliva.

Tyler Brooks: So when it eventually bites me, it just injects that cow sugar right into my bloodstream.

Maddie Lawson: Exactly. And your immune system spots this foreign sugar and treats it like a dangerous invader.

Tyler Brooks: Right.

Maddie Lawson: So it produces specific IgE antibodies to fight it off. Think of IgE antibodies like highly specialized security guards at a club.

Tyler Brooks: I like that analogy.

Maddie Lawson: Yeah, they are given one photo of one specific suspect, the alpha-gal sugar, and they are told to attack it on sight.

Tyler Brooks: So the next time I eat beef or dairy.

Maddie Lawson: Exactly. The next time you eat beef, dairy, or gelatin, those security guards see the sugar from the food and launch a full-scale allergic reaction.

Tyler Brooks: And this is where the delayed reaction becomes incredibly tricky for emergency rooms, right?

Maddie Lawson: Yes.

Tyler Brooks: Because normal food allergies, they usually hit you within minutes. But alpha-gal hits you anywhere from three to six hours later. Right. Why is there such a delay?

Maddie Lawson: Because it's tied to digestion. When you eat a steak, it takes hours for your stomach and small intestine to break down the fat and meat enough for those specific sugars to actually enter your bloodstream and encounter those antibodies.

Tyler Brooks: Oh, that makes sense.

Maddie Lawson: It's like your immune system taking notes on a cow, but blaming the burger you ate when you wake up in hives at two in the morning.

Tyler Brooks: Oh man.

Maddie Lawson: Yeah, you wake up with severe gastrointestinal distress or anaphylaxis, and you think, what did I just eat? But the trigger was dinner like hours ago.

Tyler Brooks: That is brutal. Now, again, we really need to put up some serious guardrails on the data here.

Maddie Lawson: Yes. Context is key.

Tyler Brooks: Because the CDC estimates up to 450,000 Americans may be affected by this. And there was a recent study showing a 24% seroprevalence, meaning people who tested positive for the antibodies in the top five highest states.

Maddie Lawson: Okay.

Tyler Brooks: But but Texas is not one of those states.

Maddie Lawson: All right. That's important.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah, the highest concentrations are up in places like Arkansas, Missouri, and Virginia.

Maddie Lawson: Yeah.

Tyler Brooks: Furthermore, just having the antibody in your blood doesn't guarantee you'll react to meat.

Maddie Lawson: That's definitely reassuring, but it's still something to be highly aware of, especially since the black-legged tick, which is the vector for Lyme disease, can also transmit it.

Tyler Brooks: Right, and they have a much wider range.

Maddie Lawson: Exactly. And for any tick, the removal rules are identical. Use fine-tipped tweezers, grasp it as close to the skin as possible, and pull straight out.

Tyler Brooks: No weird internet remedies.

Maddie Lawson: No. Don't twist it, don't try to smother it with petroleum jelly, and definitely don't hold a lit match to it.

Tyler Brooks: Good advice. So since we're out in the yard, let's talk about the invisible agitators.

Maddie Lawson: Ugh, chiggers.

Tyler Brooks: Chiggers. I want to bust a major myth right now.

Maddie Lawson: Yeah.

Tyler Brooks: Chiggers are not insects.

Maddie Lawson: They aren't.

Tyler Brooks: No, they are microscopic larval mites. And despite what your grandfather told you, they do not burrow under your skin and they do not suck your blood.

Maddie Lawson: Okay, well, if they aren't burrowing, Tyler, why do they cause an itch that lasts for a week?

Tyler Brooks: It's all about their saliva. They inject digestive enzymes into your skin that literally liquefy your skin cells and then they feed on that liquid. That sounds awful. It is. And your body reacts to this cell destruction by forming a hardened microscopic tube around the bite area called a stylostome. It acts like a drinking straw for the chigger.

Maddie Lawson: Okay, so the chigger feeds and falls off pretty quickly, but that hardened tube is left behind.

Tyler Brooks: Yes. That stylostome is stuck in your skin like a tiny splinter, constantly irritating your nerve endings until your skin naturally sheds it days later.

Maddie Lawson: So that's why it itches for so long.

Tyler Brooks: Exactly. That enzymatic destruction is what produces the intense itch, which doesn't even peak until a day or two after you were in the grass. This means painting clear nail polish over a chigger bite does absolutely nothing. You are just painting over an empty, hardened tube.

Maddie Lawson: That is a phenomenal explanation. Now, moving from the grass to the water, we all know mosquitoes breed in standing water and carry risks like West Nile virus and dengue fever.

Tyler Brooks: Right. They pierce your skin like a tiny hypodermic needle.

Maddie Lawson: Yeah. But in central Texas, especially in the spring, we have outbreaks of flies that operate very differently.

Tyler Brooks: You mean the scissor mouths?

Maddie Lawson: Yes. Black flies, which are often called buffalo gnats, and biting midges, the classic no CMs.

Tyler Brooks: Okay. How are they different?

Maddie Lawson: Well, unlike mosquitoes, these insects don't pierce. They have tiny scissor-like mandibles that physically slice your skin open to create a small bleeding wound. Ouch. Yeah. And as they cut, they secrete an anticoagulant saliva that causes a severe prolonged allergic reaction.

Tyler Brooks: Texas A&M documented an outbreak of black flies a few years ago around the Navasota and College Station areas. People were reporting what they thought were daytime mosquitoes biting their heads and necks, leaving these swollen welts that lasted for weeks.

Maddie Lawson: That it wasn't mosquitoes.

Tyler Brooks: Nope. Black flies breed in moving water, like the Guadalupe and Comal rivers, and they can fly up to ten miles looking for a meal.

Maddie Lawson: That's quite a trip.

Tyler Brooks: So if you get a welt at the river in April that lasts for three weeks, it wasn't a mosquito. Mosquitoes stab. These things use scissors.

Maddie Lawson: And before we move back toward the house, we have to mention the real estate angle with non-biting midges.

Tyler Brooks: The Chironomidae.

Maddie Lawson: Yes, they look like large mosquitoes, but they don't bite at all.

Tyler Brooks: So what's the problem?

Maddie Lawson: Well, if you are shopping for a lakefront house on Canyon Lake, you really need to know about them. During their peak emergence, they arrive in immense swarms.

Tyler Brooks: Like covering everything.

Maddie Lawson: Literally everything. They completely cover your house, your vehicles, your patio furniture.

Tyler Brooks: Yes.

Maddie Lawson: And because there are suddenly millions of midges everywhere, the local spider population explodes and your house gets covered in webs.

Tyler Brooks: Oh man.

Maddie Lawson: It's a seasonal nightmare that buyers rarely know about until after closing.

Tyler Brooks: Speaking of spiders, let's head into the garage and the dark corners of the house.

Maddie Lawson: Yes.

Tyler Brooks: Because spiders cause true medical misdirection. They send people to the emergency room with symptoms that doctors routinely misdiagnose.

Maddie Lawson: Exactly.

Tyler Brooks: Let's start with the Southern Black Widow. The one people fear is the glossy black mature female. But Maddie, a lot of people misunderstand her markings.

Maddie Lawson: They really do. The famous red hourglass is actually on the underside of her abdomen.

Tyler Brooks: Right, not the top.

Maddie Lawson: Exactly. If she is sitting normally in her messy web, you might not even see it. You usually find them in dark, undisturbed spaces, under the lips of garden pots, inside irrigation valve boxes, or tucked up under patio furniture.

Tyler Brooks: Now the pain from a black widow bite isn't delayed.

Maddie Lawson: No, it's pretty immediate.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah, the venom is a potent neurotoxin called alpha-latrotoxin. The bite itself might just feel like a tiny pinprick, but we include it in this breakdown because of the diagnostic delay.

Maddie Lawson: Right. So someone is out working in the yard, they get a tiny pinprick on their finger that they barely notice.

Tyler Brooks: Okay.

Maddie Lawson: What they don't know is that the neurotoxin is specifically targeting the nerve endings that control their muscles. It forces those nerves to dump all of their acetylcholine at once.

Tyler Brooks: And acetylcholine is the chemical messenger that tells a muscle to contract, right?

Maddie Lawson: Exactly. So your abdominal muscles receive a massive signal to clench with no signal to relax.

Tyler Brooks: Wow.

Maddie Lawson: Within an hour, that person is in the ER doubled over in agonizing rigid stomach pain, usually sweating profusely.

Tyler Brooks: And the doctors don't know it was a spider.

Maddie Lawson: Right. Because the patient didn't notice the spider bite, doctors frequently misdiagnose this rigid abdomen as appendicitis.

Tyler Brooks: Which is terrifying. And Texas is one of the few places where we have three different widow species overlapping: the southern, the western, and now the brown widow.

Maddie Lawson: Yes. The brown widow has had a wild range expansion since the early 2000s, moving from Florida all the way through Texas, mostly in urban areas.

Tyler Brooks: What do they look like?

Maddie Lawson: They are light to medium brown, and their hourglass is orange or yellow. But the absolute dead giveaway is her egg sack.

Tyler Brooks: The spiky one, right?

Maddie Lawson: Yes. It is completely spiky, covered in little projections, whereas a black widow's egg sack is perfectly smooth.

Tyler Brooks: Good to know.

Maddie Lawson: Interestingly, their venom effects usually stay localized, so they're generally considered less dangerous than the black widow.

Tyler Brooks: Nature is always shifting. But speaking of shifting the narrative, we have to talk about the brown recluse.

Maddie Lawson: Oh yes.

Tyler Brooks: This is my absolute favorite myth to bust. The recluse spider has cytotoxic venom. Cyto meaning cell, and toxic meaning killer. It literally melts cell membranes.

Maddie Lawson: Which is what causes those delayed necrotic skin lesions you see in online horror stories.

Tyler Brooks: Exactly. But the identification advice everyone gives is completely flawed. Everyone says, look for the violin shape on its back.

Maddie Lawson: And why is that dangerous advice here in Texas?

Tyler Brooks: Because while the classic brown recluse does live in Central Texas, we also have the Texas recluse, Loxosceles devia.

Maddie Lawson: Okay.

Tyler Brooks: And the Texas recluse is yellowish brown and lacks the violin marking entirely.

Maddie Lawson: Wow, really?

Tyler Brooks: Yeah. If you tell someone here that a spider is only dangerous if it has a violin on it, you are setting them up for a false negative.

Maddie Lawson: The real reliable field mark isn't a violin anyway, it's the eyes.

Tyler Brooks: Right, the eye pattern.

Maddie Lawson: Recluse spiders have six eyes arranged in three distinct pairs. Almost every other common house spider has eight eyes. That is the feature you need to look for.

Tyler Brooks: We also need to talk about the reality of the bites because recluse bites are massively overdiagnosed in this country.

Maddie Lawson: Yes, they are.

Tyler Brooks: It is almost a medical reflex. A patient comes in with a blistering, darkening lesion, and the doctor immediately says spider bite. But what is usually happening there, Maddie?

Maddie Lawson: Well, in reality, a huge percentage of those lesions are actually MRSA.

Tyler Brooks: MRSA.

Maddie Lawson: Yes. MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It's a serious bacterial staph infection. Okay. Just like cytotoxic venom, MRSA destroys skin tissue, creating a dark necrotic center that looks visually identical to a recluse bite.

Tyler Brooks: That's crazy.

Maddie Lawson: A patient might get a tiny scratch from a briar, MRSA gets into the wound, and a few days later it's melting the tissue.

Tyler Brooks: It's so prevalent that doctors in states with literally zero native recluse populations still regularly diagnose recluse bites.

Maddie Lawson: Yeah, it's a real issue.

Tyler Brooks: If you have an expanding blistering wound, absolutely get it looked at immediately. But understand that an antibiotic for a bacterial infection is far more likely to be the cure than treating it like venom.

Maddie Lawson: And since we are talking about bacterial infections that masquerade as bug bites, we should briefly touch on fleas before we wrap up.

Tyler Brooks: Oh, right. Specifically the cat flea in Central Texas.

Maddie Lawson: Yes. They don't just make your dog itch, they are a primary vector for murine or endemic typhus.

Tyler Brooks: And similar to the kissing bug, it's not the bite itself that transmits the disease, right?

Maddie Lawson: Exactly. It's the flea feces.

Tyler Brooks: Just like a kissing bug.

Maddie Lawson: Right. So the flea defecates while feeding, you scratch the itchy bite, and you rub the Rickettsia typhi bacteria into the wound.

Tyler Brooks: And then there's a delay.

Maddie Lawson: Yes. It incubates in the lining of your blood vessels for one to two weeks before hitting you with a sudden high fever, body aches, and sometimes a rash.

Tyler Brooks: So by the time you're sick, the bite is gone.

Maddie Lawson: It's another classic sneak attack where you've completely forgotten about the flea bite by the time the fever hits.

Tyler Brooks: All right, we've covered a tremendous amount of biology today, Maddie.

Maddie Lawson: We really have.

Tyler Brooks: Let's consolidate this into an actionable checklist for our listeners. How do we prevent these sneak attacks? And when do we actually need to bypass the home remedies and see a doctor?

Maddie Lawson: Well, for prevention, the rules require consistency. If you are going into brush or woods, use DEET or picaridin on your exposed skin, and treat your boots and pants with permethrin.

Tyler Brooks: A good call.

Maddie Lawson: And for your yard, keep the brushy edges and tall grass trimmed where your kids and dogs play, because that is where ticks and chiggers hang out.

Tyler Brooks: And manage your property's environment right. Dump out standing water in saucers, gutters, and kids' toys weekly to break the mosquito and fly cycles.

Maddie Lawson: Yes, definitely.

Tyler Brooks: For kissing bugs and midges, they are drawn to light. So switch your porch lights to warm or yellow bulbs and fix any gaps in your window screens and door sweeps.

Maddie Lawson: That's huge.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah. Remember, over 10% of those kissing bugs in the AM study were found completely inside the house.

Maddie Lawson: And when you are cleaning the garage or yard, don't reach where you can't see. Under potlips, inside recessed trash bin handles, into irrigation boxes. That is exactly where widows and recluses hide.

Tyler Brooks: Just use a flashlight.

Maddie Lawson: Right. Shake out unworn clothing and shoes before you put them on. And finally, if you've been hiking, do a full body tick check within a couple of hours of coming inside.

Tyler Brooks: That's excellent. Now, what are the specific triggers for seeking medical attention?

Maddie Lawson: Four main scenarios.

Tyler Brooks: Okay, lay them out.

Maddie Lawson: First, if you suspect a widow bite and you develop severe abdominal cramping and sweating, go to the ER immediately and make sure to tell them you suspect a spider bite so they don't jump straight to appendicitis.

Tyler Brooks: Skip the misdiagnosis.

Maddie Lawson: Second, if you have any expanding, blistering, or darkening skin lesion, get it looked at, keeping in mind it's probably an MRSA bacterial infection, not a recluse bite.

Tyler Brooks: Okay, and the third.

Maddie Lawson: Third, if you start experiencing delayed hives, gastrointestinal distress, or anaphylaxis three to six hours after eating a meal with red meat, dairy, or gelatin.

Tyler Brooks: The alpha-gal issue.

Maddie Lawson: Yes, you need to specifically ask your doctor for an alpha-gal IgE test, because most clinicians will not think of it on their own.

Tyler Brooks: And the fourth scenario.

Maddie Lawson: Fourth, if you develop unexplained cardiac symptoms and you have a known history of kissing bug exposure on your property, you need to discuss Chagas testing with your provider.

Tyler Brooks: Perfect. That brings us to the end of our breakdown on Central Texas sneak attacks. We want to give a warm thank you to our generous sponsors for making this series possible.

Maddie Lawson: And please make sure you tune in for our final installment, part three, where we are shifting our focus away from the pests that attack humans and exploring the household structural invaders.

Tyler Brooks: Yeah, the termites and the tree roaches that go after your home itself.

Maddie Lawson: It's going to be a great one.

Tyler Brooks: Until then, we want to leave you with a final thought to mull over.

Maddie Lawson: When you really think about the mechanics of what we discussed today, our immune systems are essentially living, breathing historical records.

Tyler Brooks: They really are. Every delayed allergy, every weird welt you get down by the river, or sudden meat intolerance you develop. It is just your body keeping a meticulous, silent diary of every environment you have ever walked through, long after your brain has forgotten the trip.

Maddie Lawson: Thanks for listening, everyone.

Tyler Brooks: Stay safe out there, Texas.

Sponsor Message: This episode is brought to you by Sharon Hayes, Realtor. Sharon pairs two decades of U.S. Army discipline with the patient, detail-driven service that buyers need. A retired combat veteran and licensed realtor since 2017, she specializes in luxury homes, new construction, and land, a strong fit for the area's mix of permanent residences, second homes, and investment properties. She works with buyers and investors alike. And as a military relocation professional, she's a knowledgeable resource for veterans and service families drawn to the Hill Country. You can reach Sharon at 808-551-7371.