Officer of the Year Adrian Castro Looks to the Future

When Adrian Castro ran into a burning house a couple of years ago, heroism was not on his mind. He had a job to do. The roof had already been engulfed in flames and a small cluster of people stood outside the residence, but he and Tyrel Berrie, both of which had arrived on the scene first, quickly learned that not everyone had made  it out to safety.

“It was in the summer and we were having tons of fires,” Castro recalled. “We ended up being told by a girl out front with her kids…’grandma is still in the house!’

Without hesitation, Castro ran into the house and quickly became aware of the seriousness of the situation. Debris lie all over the place and flames licked the ceiling, but he couldn’t leave the residence alone, grandma was still inside.

“About three steps in, I realized the roof was on fire and this wasn’t anywhere I wanted to be,” he recalled, “and thank God I saw her right there between the kitchen and living room. I ran to her, grabbed her, and we got out. She was standing there and there was a bunch of debris on the ground…but it saved her life.”

Castro had always thought that there would be a point in his career where he would really make a difference, and looking back he cites this day as one of them, but that wasn’t his objective going in. He merely wanted to do the right thing.

Time passed and word of his good deed reached the ears of his superior officers, but Castro wasn’t seeking praise for what he’d done. “Doing the right thing doesn’t always need recognition,” he said humbly.

Recently, the San Angelo Police Officer was awarded Patrol Officer of the Year and overall Officer of the Year, but he doesn’t take sole credit for the awards he’s won, citing strong teamwork and information sharing among other officers, and a motivational push from the sergeants and lieutenants above him as equal parts of his achievement.

“We just had a good year,” he said. “The guys that I was working with was a good group. Guys that are willing to take reports while I was making traffic stops…it just balanced out. Officer Salmon—I think he wrote more reports than any other officer in our sector. Officer Cannady and Officer Hawthorne are great back up guys and great initiators, so we’re all gathering and sharing information.”

Adrian Castro is originally from Sterling City and moved to San Angelo after being hired on at the SAPD. Castro says he didn’t necessarily always want to become an officer, but felt the desire to move into a career field where he could proactively do good after years working at the state school.

“I worked at the state school prior to this and saw a lot of individuals that needed help and some that were there that had basically told me they had cheated the system and things like that,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘you know, these are bad guys and they can assault whoever they want to with no consequences, basically. They’re in a controlled setting.’ Then you think about there’s all these things happening out in the real world every day that there are consequences for. I wanted to get into some sort of environment where I could be proactive and not reactive.”

Castro joined the SAPD in 2009 and has worked patrol ever since. In the past year, he’s made over 100 arrests, a third of which were drug related and the majority of those being felony drug charges.

Through his experience at the SAPD over the past five years, Castro says he’s learned a lot about the criminal culture in San Angelo and the element that fuels it, and prefers to focus on narcotics when he’s not responding to calls.

“It didn’t take long to realize that the root of all of it is going to be the drugs, the narcotics,” Castro says of San Angelo crime. “That fuels a lot of things: domestic disturbances, assaults, thefts, burglaries, vehicles being broken into. They’re either going to be juveniles or meth addicts. There’s hardly ever going to be a serial criminal as far as thefts or burglary that doesn’t involve drugs. They’re not out there doing that because they’re real smart, they’re out there doing that because they’ve got a habit to feed. I see that as ‘how can I do more narcotics-related stuff.’”

Castro hopes to do more “narcotics-related stuff” in the future, and would ultimately like to join either the PD’s Narcotics Division or Special Operations Services. When he joined the PD in 2009,

Castro was trained by officer Marciano Garza, who has since moved on to Round Rock. Garza advised him to “give this job a chance to show you where you need to be” and to “give it five years before you apply anywhere,” he said. Five years in he feels he’s ready to make that move, and has received the support of his sergeant, Ken Solbery, who has set the move as a goal for the officer.

“Having good supervisors above you like that is huge when they’re constantly encouraging you to do better and do more and keep it up,” he said, pausing briefly to give a grumbly-voiced impression of Lieutenant Carter as example. “It makes all the difference in the world when they’re constantly encouraging you to do better and to push yourself and they see potential in you.”

Despite his motivations to advance in the career field, Castro names two things as the most important parts of his life. He hopes to inspire those values in the officers he trains, as well as to motivate them to learn from his mistakes and to become well-round law enforcement officials.

“I’m a family man and a Christian above all else,” he said. “That’s pretty much me in a nutshell. [I’ve got] a lot of drive and I like to catch bad guys.”