After serving in World War I as a lieutenant of field artillery in the U.S. Marines, Paddock studied at the University of Southern California.

He won the 100 and 200 m in the first major sporting event after the war, the 1919 Inter-Allied Games, in which soldiers of the Allied nations competed against each other.

In 1926, Paddock appeared in The Campus Flirt, a black-and-white silent film (now lost) featuring another Texas native, Paramount starlet Bebe Daniels.

[5] Paddock served on the personal staff of Major General William P. Upshur beginning at the end of World War I.

[1] In 1943, during World War II, Upshur and Paddock (by then a captain) died in a plane crash near Sitka, Alaska.