LUZ GOMEZ
If you were to ask me in my highschool days…”Cruz you are going
to be a cop when you turn 29 years old” I’d probably would of laughed straight in
your face and replied “Yeah right” because at the time, I was way on the other side of law where
I even spent some time in the joint just to prove to you how screwed up I was, but it
happened!....how? I don’t have a frickin clue, but by 1991, I found
myself wearing a dark blue Dinuba PD uniform and driving a Crown Vic cruzin through
the dark alleys of the city of Dinuba, and it wasn’t until a few years later that I had discovered that my Grandfather, Luz Gomez, (pictured above) was actually a county constable in his hometown of Edinburg,
Texas during the 1920’s & 30’s, which was considered to be at the same level as
a Deputy Sheriff in today’s law enforcement realm.
It was pretty difficult for me to find any information about his past
legacy with the exception of my Mom’s memory about a certain incident where my
Grandfather was transporting a violent prisoner in the back of his patrol car,
which did not have any protected backseat windshield, and somehow the prisoner
slipped out of his handcuffs and begin to choke my Grandfather from behind, but
Thank God my Grandpa was able to escape
from the prisoner’s neck grip by stopping in the middle of a country
road and physically overcame his attacker.
Now remembered this was during the prohibition era where violent assaults on Police Officers was a everyday
occurrence, but I really wanted to find more info about my Grandfathers
misadventures as a Police Officer, unfortunately, he died from diabetes complications when I was only 10
years old, which was kind of ironic because I too suffer from the same disease, which scares the shit out of me because he died at the ripe young age of 62 and I'm turning
57 this May.…yikes! To top it off, my Grandfather remarried a woman named Mabel and together they had a son named Sonny, who
was about 15 years older than me (my real Grandmother died of Tuberculosis when
my mother was just a small girl…I’m telling you... I’m really screwed) anyway it turned
out that Sonny later became a Police Officer in the city of Edinburg during the
1970’s and was later promoted to detective during his career….just like me!...but he too died
of diabetes complications, but at a younger age of 52…Shit! I did find some old newspaper clippings where
Sonny worked on a check caper and eventually apprehended his suspect, but man…It would have been awesome if
I would of been able to write their stories as crime fighters, but I will still continue with my mission to get some more information about them…anywho…what
I’m trying to say is that isn't it funny how things end up in life because I never
thought in a hundred years that I would become a cop, but BOOM... it happened...and I became one! Which shows that sometimes we cannot fully control our destiny so don't be surprised if it happens to you because for some reason God has planted this road for us..therefore some of us become lawyers...some of us become doctors and some of us become cops and there is nothing we could really do about it, but follow the yellow brick road , so here's to you Grandpa for leading the path, in fact, my nephew, Matthew, told me several months ago that he wants to become a CHP officer...Uh Huh...go figure!
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