A 53-year-old Gilroy man who spent 16 years supervising incarcerated youth in San Mateo County — and now works for the San Benito County Probation Department — is being held without bail on charges he traded sexually explicit messages and images with a 13-year-old boy he met on TikTok.

Damon Jon Luecke was arraigned Wednesday in San Jose on three felony counts and a misdemeanor, and Santa Clara County prosecutors say the case is far from closed. Because Luecke's career was built almost entirely inside youth-justice institutions — including a stint as a juvenile corrections officer and counselor at San Mateo County's Boys Ranch — investigators say they are actively scrutinizing his past and fear there may be other victims. The charges land as California courts and lawmakers grapple with how predators use platforms like TikTok to reach children, and they raise a pointed question about the vetting of people entrusted with the state's most vulnerable kids.

The case began not with a detective but with a mother. On July 28, according to prosecutors, a woman contacted the Gilroy Police Department after finding messages between her son and a grown man on TikTok. Investigators say the boy had told the man, in those conversations, that he was 13. The man kept going anyway — discussing photographs, sexual acts, and meeting in person, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office alleges.

The man, prosecutors say, was Damon Jon Luecke, 53, of Gilroy. Officers arrested him at his home on Aug. 7. He was arraigned Wednesday on three felonies and a misdemeanor, is being held without bail, and is due back in court Sept. 28 to enter a plea, according to KTVU, which covered the hearing.

What has drawn unusual attention from prosecutors is not just the conduct but the résumé. Luecke was working as an IT staff analyst for the San Benito County Probation Department at the time of his arrest. Before that, the DA's office said, he spent roughly 16 years with the San Mateo County Probation Department, including work as a juvenile corrections officer and counselor at the Boys Ranch — an in-custody facility meant to steer young people back toward "positive and healthy choices" before they return home.

"There are child predators lurking online," Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement announcing the charges. "The fact that this defendant was working in law enforcement — with children at one point — is deeply disturbing."

Deputy District Attorney David Shabaglian framed the allegations as a breach of public trust. "Despite being in that position, they exploited a 13-year-old boy, sexually," he told reporters after the arraignment, per KTVU. "And that is egregious, and we take that conduct very seriously." According to KTVU, Shabaglian said it was the victim's mother who came forward with the information, and that she was present in court for the hearing.

Investigators obtained search warrants for the victim's phone and online accounts and recovered sexually explicit images of the boy, KTVU reported. And prosecutors are signaling that the investigation is widening. Gilroy Police Chief Brandon Sanchez said his department is combing through digital evidence specifically to gauge whether Luecke reached other children over his long career around the juvenile system.

"We're really just digging through as much data as we can, really to understand the depth of what we're facing," Sanchez said, according to KTVU. "Because of the positions he's held, we're taking it very seriously, and we're really seeking any information that may lead us in the direction of where more victims might have been affected by him."

Authorities are urging anyone with information about Luecke to contact local law enforcement.

Two questions now hang over the case, and neither is answered by the charging documents. The first is whether the platform-borne grooming prosecutors describe — an adult meeting a named minor on TikTok and continuing after the child stated his age — reflects a one-off or a pattern, the thing Gilroy investigators say they are chasing. The second is institutional: how a man spent the better part of two decades inside facilities built to house and counsel children, then moved into a second probation agency, without any of it surfacing sooner. Neither the San Mateo County nor the San Benito County probation departments has publicly detailed what, if anything, it knew.

Luecke has not entered a plea, and the allegations against him have not been tested in court. His next hearing is scheduled for late September.