There's an early you-frame-it lesson for watchdogs o' the world in the Texas Youth Commission scandal: When something sounds odd, ask questions.

Alison Brock, chief of staff to Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, made the initial inquiries alerting folks in the Texas Capitol to reports of sexual abuse of youths in a West Texas facility, as revealed by the Austin American-Statesman's Mike Ward.

An aide to Gov. Rick Perry contacted the district attorney holding the investigative file who requested state assistance pursuing charges. All of this happened before a legislative firestorm blew up last month, potentially rippling through the entire criminal justice system.

Brock, 38, is among scores of diligent legislative aides little known to the public. She is a graduate of Austin's Stephen F. Austin High School and the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked for Turner since 1993, save for stints with the American Civil Liberties Union, Travis County and at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

Last fall, she dined with Isela Gutierrez, coordinator of the Texas Coalition Advocating Justice for Juveniles. Gutierrez asked Brock whether she'd heard of the Texas Rangers investigating a TYC school in West Texas.

Nope. But on Oct. 30, Brock called the Texas Department of Public Safety, which put her in touch with a Ranger investigator, Sgt. Brian Burzynski. He spoke with Brock for about an hour and forwarded his 200-plus-page report.

"Outraged," Brock said of her reaction to the described incidents, a feeling that deepened when she realized that the three-year statute of limitations on such acts would run out this year.

"I felt an urgency, a duty," she said of her subsequent calls to Perry's office and failed attempts to reach the responsible district attorney. Brock kicked herself too, wondering: "Why didn't I dig further way back when?" (My answer: No one nudged earlier.)

Her inquiries stirred the storm raging now. Otherwise, Gutierrez said, "We would still be going around and around with TYC in them saying there are no problems with physical violence, abuse, staff misconduct."

Brock, Turner said, "spurred people to start asking questions and exercising more oversight, doing things we probably should have been doing anyway. She helped shine the light on problems. . . . People couldn't continue to focus as if they didn't know."

Brock's not interested in being cast as a Hollywood-ready heroine. She suggests instead that Texans keep in mind the state's captive populations: adult prisoners, nursing home residents, foster children, residents of TYC facilities.

"Here's the rub with all of this, with these institutions: If we don't ask, then at some level, we're culpable. I just made a couple of phone calls. What if we all made more phone calls up here at the Capitol? What is getting swept under the rug?

"We're not all here to be cows in the pasture, you know?"

We know afresh.

The lesson again: Something troubling? Ask about it.