LA GRANGE, Texas — Mya Grounds used to be a regular visitor at grocery stores in this small Texas town, but that has changed in recent years.

Grounds has nothing against fellow customers and calls them “very friendly.” It’s just that shopping in La Grange had become too time consuming.

Grounds, you see, is the mother of running back J.K. Dobbins, who is a football hero in the town of 4,500 that is 100 miles west of Houston. When Grounds goes shopping, she is stopped regularly for updates on Dobbins, who once starred at La Grange High School and is now in his first season with the Broncos.

“I can’t go anywhere, so I order my groceries a lot of the time because I get stuck in the store for hours,’’ Grounds said at her home in La Grange. “I’ll turn down one aisle and one person will want to talk football and I’ll finish that conversation and then go down the next aisle, and another person will be waiting to ask me how J.K. is doing. I’ll even try to go to Walmart at 10 (p.m.) when they’re about to close or go there early, and it’s the same thing.”

Such is life when your son had 2,000-yard rushing seasons at La Grange High School in 2014 and 2015 and had big-time college coaches flying in from around the country to recruit him. Dobbins eventually starred at Ohio State and is now in his sixth NFL season.

The Broncos play at Houston on Sunday for what is a bit of a homecoming for Dobbins, who is third in the NFL in rushing with 634 yards. Grounds will attend the game along with more than 20 other relatives from the La Grange area. She will wear a Dobbins No. 27 Broncos jersey and a white hat with “27” on the front and “Mom” on the back.

There will be others from La Grange at the game, including David Cooper, Dobbins’ former high school running backs coach. And Grounds said about 10 relatives who live in Houston will be on hand.

“It’s going to be a special moment for me,’’ Dobbins said. “Hopefully, I do great.”

It will be the third NFL game in Houston for the 5-foot-10, 212-pound Dobbins. He rushed for 48 yards on two carries in his second pro game after being a second-round pick by the Baltimore Ravens in 2020. While with the Los Angeles Chargers last January, he was held to 26 yards on nine carries in a 32-12 wild-card playoff game loss to the Texans.

Entering Sunday’s game at NRG Stadium, Dobbins didn’t want to talk about his last game there. But he had plenty to say about what it was like growing up in La Grange.

“It meant a lot being there and going to high school there,’’ said Dobbins, 26, who was born in Houston, moved to La Grange as a small child, and now makes his offseason home back in the Houston area. “It’s the best little small town you could probably be in. It’s a really big football town. Whenever I get a chance to go back and hang out, I do. It’s a great place. I love it there.”

To many outsiders, the town is known for the 1973 song “La Grange” by ZZ Top, which is about an illegal brothel called the “Chicken Ranch” that operated there from 1905-73. It was the setting for the Broadway play and movie, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

“I didn’t know what it was about then,’’ Dobbins said with a laugh about growing up in La Grange. “I never really listened to the lyrics. Then I go to college and they told me. It was crazy.”

The town now is also well known for having produced Dobbins, who starred from 2013-16 at the local high school, which over the years has had an annual enrollment of about 600 students. And there are plenty of reminders in town about Dobbins.

At Jay Dee’s Bar and Grill, there are two autographed, framed jerseys on the wall from when the running back played for the Ravens from 2020-23. Grounds said they need now to get some No. 27 Broncos jerseys up.

At La Grange High School, head coach Kyle Cooper, who is in his third season and didn’t coach Dobbins, has on display a framed replica jersey from when he wore No. 22 for the Leopards. And current Leopards players know about the former running back.

Speaking before La Grange’s 66-42 win over archrival Giddings on Friday night, senior tight end-defensive end Oliver Gunn, 18, recounted meeting Dobbins around 2014.

“He autographed a ball for me and I still have it at my house,’’ Gunn said. “I was a big J.K. fan. It was like a surreal thing getting it. I felt like I was winning the lottery. He’s a hometown hero here. He has a super great personality and you still see him around town sometimes.”

La Grange junior running back Dillan Johnson met Dobbins when Dobbins starred for the Leopards a decade ago and remembers him being a “great person and a great running back who was very electrifying.”

Darius Johnson sees Dobbins plenty. After all, the Leopards nose guard is his cousin.

In the stands Friday night were some of Dobbins’ teachers from high school. Among them were Heather Muesse, who had him in geometry when he was a sophomore in the 2014-15 school year, and Laurie Stork, who taught him in an English class in the fall of 2016 before he enrolled early at Ohio State in January 2017.

“He was very, very smart,’’ Muesse said. “It was almost like he didn’t want his classmates to know he actually did well in math and enjoyed math. He wanted to be the class clown, so he wanted to kind of be the center of attention. But he also knew that when it was time to crack down and focus and get the job done, he did.”

Dobbins’ mom said her son had a 3.8 grade-point average in high school.

“He was a solid student and just as a person in general,’’ Stork said. “He was always very respectful. He’s such a congenial guy and so easy to talk to. Just a genuinely nice person.”

In the press box was Gary Dusek, who has been the radio play-by-play announcer for La Grange football games for 35 years. His career has included broadcasting all the high school games Dobbins played as well as games his father Lawrence Dobbins played for the Leopards before he graduated from the school in 1998.

Many in town know all about Dobbins’ father, a 5-foot-7, 170-pound running back who had multiple 1,000-yard rushing seasons for the Leopards. He also won a state title in the 100-meter dash in 1998 and was a big star in town.

“Lawrence was a powerful running back,’’ Dusek said. “He wasn’t very tall but he would just run through and by people. J.K. is a lot like that. But I’ve never seen a running back like J.K. with the drive he had. He’s the best back to come out of this area since probably (Pro Football Hall of Famer) Eric Dickerson of Sealy (who starred in the late 1970s at Sealy High School, 50 miles east of La Grange).”

Lawrence Dobbins didn’t have the grades to play at a Division I school and ended up at Division II Lincoln (Pa.) University to run track. That didn’t work out and he left. He walked on to play football at Blinn Junior College in Brenham, Texas, but quit when he didn’t get immediate playing time.

Grounds, 45, first met Lawrence Dobbins in La Grange when they were very young and she had a relationship with him for about eight years from the late 1990s until J.K. was 5 in 2004. She was just shy of turning 19 when J.K. was born on Dec. 17, 1998.

“After he quit football, he fell into the wrong crowd,’’ Grounds said of Lawrence. “He was easily persuaded and then he had heart problems and blood pressure problems, bad health, on top of drugs.”

Lawrence Dobbins went to prison twice when J.K. was young. The first time was on a drug charge and the second came after he was on probation and was arrested for harboring a fugitive. After spending about a year in prison in his second stint, he died of a stroke on Feb. 22, 2014, when J.K. was 15 and a freshman in high school.

“It’s tough on a kid, especially on a kid in his teen years, especially with him being incarcerated,’’ Dobbins said. “My dad would send me letters all the time. So he just taught me things even when he was locked up. … He told me to keep working hard and to keep a smile on his face. … My father meant everything to me.”

Grounds said J.K. was “devastated” when his father died.

“I was,’’ Dobbins said “When the casket closed (at the memorial service), I couldn’t take it any more (and left). But it’s all good now, though. Give it to God.”

Since entering the NFL, Dobbins has worn 27, the number his father donned at La Grange High School. He said he didn’t want to wear it in high school since his father was still living when he started playing and he couldn’t get it at Ohio State since it was retired for Heisman Trophy-winning running back Eddie George.

“I always do it for him,’’ Dobbins said of wearing the number to honor his father. “I think about him.”

Dusek said Dobbins was a “straight-arrow kid” growing up. Grounds said one reason for that was seeing what his father went through.

“When you have a dad that is going through things like that and got in trouble, that taught him not to get involved with people going down the wrong path,’’ she said.

Dobbins inherited his athletic ability from his father as well as from his mother. The 5-9 Grounds was a solid basketball player at La Grange through her junior year of 1997-98. David Cooper, then her head coach, said “she did all the dirty work and stuff, grabbing rebounds and playing great defense.”

Grounds transferred to Albine High School in Houston, graduating in 1999. But she didn’t play basketball as a senior.

“I could have played in college but I got pregnant with J.K.,’’ said Grounds, who did go on to earn a finance degree from the University of Houston and now works for the IRS as a reports analyst in Austin, 60 miles from La Grange.

Grounds remembers how much J.K. loved football as a kid.

“He started watching football when he was 3,’’ Grounds said. “He cried to play football in kindergarten, but I wouldn’t let him play. It was so sad, so I had to give in the next year and let him play at 6.”

By the time Dobbins was 6 and playing in a pee-wee league for the La Grange Leopards, all he wanted to wear were NFL jerseys, especially for running backs. That included No. 22 for Dallas Cowboys star Emmitt Smith and No. 21 for San Diego Chargers star LaDainian Tomlinson.

“He wouldn’t wear regular clothes,’’ Grounds said. “I once drove him to school and had him dressed in a sweatsuit and he started crying. I had to take him back home (to change into a football jersey).”

After starring as a young player, Dobbins first played varsity football as a freshman at La Grange in 2014. The Leopards were deep at running back, so Dobbins mostly was a receiver and cornerback.

La Grange made it to the Class 4A state semifinals in 2014 before losing to 51-22 to Carthage. When the game was out of reach for the Leopards, Dobbins ripped off a long touchdown run.

“Somebody on the headset (with the coaches) said, ‘We really screwed this up. We should have given this kid the ball more,’’’ said David Cooper.

That season was the last one in which Lawrence was alive. Grounds said until the end, Lawrence made of point of always pushing J.K. to get better.

“He and J.K. would argue about who was the fastest,’’ Grounds said. “And Lawrence would say, ‘You don’t have a state medal, I do (for winning the 100 meters).”’

By the next season, after Lawrence died, Dobbins surpassed what Lawrence did on the football field. He rushed for 2,243 yards and scored 37 touchdowns as a sophomore in 2014 and had 2,740 yards and 35 touchdowns as a junior.

“Just being the man, that’s what I wanted,’’ Dobbins said.

He sure was the man for La Grange.

“I would tell college recruiters that I’m underselling this young man if I tell you he’s a once-in-a-career type of kid,’’ said Matt Kates, who was then La Grange’s head coach and is now head coach at Wylie High School in Abilene, Texas. “He’s a once-in-30-careers kid. He was a special young man.”

By his senior season, there was plenty of talk about Dobbins breaking all sorts of Texas state records. But his high school career soon came to an abrupt ahead.

In the 2016 opener, on the first play of a game at Liberty Hill High School, Dobbins took a handoff.

“He goes around left end for about 12 yards and he’s about to go out of bounds,’’ Kates said. “Then he sticks his foot back and he’s trying to go to the house. The linebacker trailing him tackled him from behind and his right foot got caught up. We prayed it was nothing significant but it was.”

Dobbins suffered ligament damage and a fractured ankle. Grounds, who was in the stands, said she had a “panic attack” and even to this day has “tears” thinking about the injury.

Dobbins said it was “crazy” that the game was canceled right after his first carry when a big storm arrived. While Dobbins obviously was disappointed, he soon set his mind on the recovery process.

“I knew I was going to come back because I was raised to fight to the end,” he said.

After his injury, Dobbins was assured his scholarship to Ohio State was safe and his rehabilitation began. Dobbins, whose birth name is J’kaylin, had it written in the yearbook under that name when he was a senior that his future occupation was “NFL player.” Coaches and teachers from then marvel at the positive attitude he had.

Around the same time Dobbins was hurt, Casey Lewis Wagner, an English teacher at the school, had suffered a torn ACL and also was on crutches. Wagner didn’t teach Dobbins, but said they “bonded” during that time.

“We were both on crutches and we had to wait until the other students were out of the hallway, so we didn’t get run over,’’ Wagner said. “It became a running joke who would get down the hallway the fastest. Then he got a scooter and I was still stuck using my crutches. I was halfway down the hallway ahead of him and he comes zooming by on his new scooter, and he put a bell on it. He passed me and it was like, ‘ding, ding.’’’

Wagner later located a picture in the school archives from when Dobbins was playing pee-wee football at age 10. When Dobbins visited the school in December 2017 during his freshman year at Ohio State, she had him sign the picture. It is now framed on the wall of her classroom.

Dobbins bounced back from his injury to rush for 4,459 yards in three years with the Buckeyes, including a school-record 2,003 in his final season of 2019. He points to that resilience continuing in the NFL.

After Dobbins rushed for 805 yards as a rookie in 2020, he played in just nine Ravens games over the next three seasons due to torn ACL and a torn Achilles tendon. But Dobbins bounced back with the Chargers last season and gained 905 yards.

That season and the hot start Dobbins has had this year for Denver has given folks at the grocery store plenty to talk about in La Grange. With that in mind, his mother often has her food delivered.