The two worlds of Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister

How they met sounds like the plot of a Hallmark Channel movie.

She was the daughter of Eddie DeBartolo Jr., former owner of the San Francisco 49ers and granddaughter of the man who pioneered the shopping mall concept in the 1950s. He was a local sheriff’s deputy who had worked as a hotel bellman, dug ditches and unloaded UPS trucks at night before he went into police work — and got hired on as security for her family in Tampa.

“He was always around,” said Nikki DeBartolo, 49.