Chief Garza

1. Why did you choose to be a police officer?

 I started law enforcement kind of late in life. I didn't start law enforcement until I was 36. Before that, I was in corrections, working as a correctional officer in prison. But what changed me as far as my career and wanting to get into policing was I had a lot of friends doing it. A lot of them told me this is something maybe you need to try. I said ill give it a go, and man, I've loved it since.

2. Do you think New Home has enough police officers?

Looking into the future, I'm hoping to hire another officer. But for now, we have some systems in place where we have people here that are here to take care of us and kind of help me out if needed. You might see Lynn County Sheriff's Office, deputies will come walking through. You might see Trooper Flanagan from DPS. She'll come walk through. So I try to make an effort to reach out to outside law enforcement agencies, like Lynn County and DPS, to come through and come walk the hallways and come meet our kids here.

3. Do you have kids, spouse, siblings, etc?

I have one grandkid. He's 5 years old. That's my heart and soul right now. My kids, they're adults. My son's 26. My oldest daughter's 23 and then my youngest daughter's 21. They're all grown and doing their own things, and I’ve been married 27 years.

4. What kind of workout split do you do? 

Y'all might have seen me in a sling a couple years ago when I ruptured my tricep. I kind of blew it out, I had to have surgery. My workouts had to switch up and stuff. So now I focus more on muscle endurance instead of heavy, heavy lifting. 

5. How long have you been working out?

I'll be 52 next month and I started at 13, so over 30 years. Just something I love to do.

6. Do you take steroids and supplements like that?

I don't take steroids. I do take over-the-counter supplements, creatine, pre workout, and vitamins. I probably take 4 vitamins every morning. I take salts, middle salts, I take turmeric, the list goes on and on. I try to stay as natural as possible. I've tried peptides. That's kind of the new thing right now,and peptides are an amino acid that your body already produces. The people that do the peptides, they just take different peptides, different amino acids and combine them. They supplement your body so much better and stuff than just regularly account supplements and stuff. So if you needed something to help you heal up on an injury, there's one for that. If you need something for weight loss, there's one for that. If you need one for cardio endurance, muscular endurance, there's one for that.

7. Can you walk me through your day?

I get here at about 7 o'clock in the morning. Obviously make some coffee. Then I'll spend the majority of my time at the elementary in the mornings, greeting the kids, greeting the parents, being visible, so everybody sees that there's somebody out there. I'll go from there, inside, I'll go check doors, make contact with teachers if they have any questions, you know, high five the kids and stuff while they're walking up and down the hallways. Check with Miss Beck and the principal's there. I'll leave there. I'll do a couple of rounds, kind of patrolling outside, making sure all the doors on the outside are locked. Then I’ll come over to high school. Same thing again. I come walk the hallways a little bit, make sure everybody's at where they need to be. Check all the perimeter doors, start checking a couple classroom doors here and there and stuff. I'll check the outside again. I'll come in. If there's nothing else going on, I'll check my emails, and cameras. Cameras are a big thing here for me. And then I'll get out, say hi to everybody, walk around, be visible again. And then if I have reports to do, I'll knock out my reports. If there's any meetings I need to get to and stuff, I'll get to my meetings and make things happen and stuff. You know, make sure everything happens and gets done.

8. What’s your favorite part of each day?

Personally, my favorite part of each day is getting up in the morning, going to the gym,and getting a good workout in. As far as work wise, just coming in every morning, saying hi to everybody, and making sure everything's good here, and just keeping everybody safe.

9. Which painting or picture in your office is your favorite?

That one of my grandson in the Captain America suit. That's him a couple years ago when he was four months old, and I'm waiting for my new one. He came out with a headful of hair too. Each one of them has a story behind it, like my daughter. My daughter was a three-time all American wrestler at University of Texas. Other ones are family vacations, of my grandson, and then that one over there is my prior job at Friendship. I worked Legacy, they had a bunch of special needs kids there. And, man, I loved it. I love the kids there. It was a good thing for me.

10.  Who is your favorite student to see around the halls and why?

With each kid, I have a different relationship as far as, high fives, whether it's talking about football, whatever the case would be. I love when the kids come to talk to me about their day, and what's going on. So just keeping that line of communication open for me helps me with my job because it makes connections. But at the same time, it gives everybody the comfort that I'm a police officer here. I do law enforcement. That's my job, but at the same time, I'm still here to help out. If somebody's got a question about driving or a ticket they might have or something they saw, then I want them to come ask me questions because that's the only way to get the truth. As far as one particular kid, I'm going to plea the fifth, but I have a few in mind.