JP Contreras: One of a kind

One of my favorite public officials, JP Robert “Bobby” Contreras, got some well-deserved recognition last Wednesday, July 15, at an official portrait unveiling ceremony. Hard to believe he’s been gone a year now.

A justice of the peace for 25 years, a dozen years as a PSJA ISD trustee before that, there was simply no denying that Contreras was the real deal when it came to honor and integrity. I have met a few like him, but I wish there were more.

If I needed a “read” on someone I didn’t know very well, I could always call Bobby. He knew almost everyone across the county.

More times than not, I’d get back one word over the phone — “worthless.” Okay, he’d add a few colorful adjectives to the mix just to hammer home the point, but it was clear that he could easily spot the phonies who roam among us.

Now that’s not to say that Bobby didn’t hold many people in high regard. He did. It’s just that he had a nose for public officials who were, well, worthless.

Too young when he died. He was only 75. I know people who don’t have half of Bobby’s love and compassion for people, his decency, who live well into their 80s, and I ask, why?

Of course, I never get back any answer.

Contreras, one could argue, lived 13 years longer than he was expected to survive after learning that he had non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, with two malignant tumors found in his abdominal area, back in 2012. But the guy was too tough to give in to the disease. He survived the brutal chemo treatments and returned to the bench until his time finally ran out last July 4.

Even after his second cancer diagnosis last summer — bladder cancer, stage 4 — played out, and he stopped the chemo treatments, accepting home hospice as his final point of departure, the guy was still upbeat, cracking jokes over the cell while accepting his fate, although as the weeks wore on, you could tell he was growing weaker.

For those of us who loved the guy, knowing his death was relatively imminent was a bitter pill to swallow. Looking for a miracle, none was to be found.

The last text I got from him two weeks before his death read: “Weaker but hanging in.”

One thing about Bobby, he never gave up.

If all public officials were cut from the same cloth as Contreras, what a better place this would be.

While almost every elected official says they have sympathy and empathy for the poor, the down-trodden, the reality is:Bobby Contreras really did.

For a justice of the peace, Precinct 2, Place 1, you can’t ask for anything better.

“A man of the people.”

If I were to write his epitaph, I think that would be it.