CHIEF JUSTICE OF APPEALS COURT HAD TOUGH ROW TO HOE

By Juan Montoya
Roy Valdez's best career counselor was not made of flesh and blood.
Instead, it was a hoe with a metal blade and a wooden handle.
"I used to hoe sugar beets in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, as kid with my migrant family and we'd be dead tired at the end of the day," he recalled recently while munching on a healthy sandwich and soup at the New York Deli Restaurant in Brownsville.
"My dad would tell me that unless I went to school and got an education, I should get used to it." Thumping the hard Plains dirt from sunup to sunset and heaving heavy buckets and hampers filled with cherries and cucumbers in Michigan and Indiana dampened Valdez's enthusiasm for the agrarian lifestyle.
Even after the family moved away from the Midwestern migrant stream and went to California to pick grapes and to lay them out to dry as raisins, the young Valdez nurtured other dreams. But never in his life did he ever think that someday he would not only become a lawyer or a judge, much less the Chief Justice of the 13th Court of Appeals.
Now, with nearly 30 years of judicial experience, he says he has to hit the hustins again to run for reelection and extend his tenure which includes two terms as chief justice.
"My past judicial experience has enabled me to serve the citizens of a 20-county district in an efficient and practical manner,” he said, easily making the mental transition from his years on the migrant stream and into judicial politics.
The 13th Court of Appeals extends from Cameron to Matagorda with five justices. The chief justice is based out of Corpus Christi and Edinburg, Texas. It was under Valdez's watch that the Edinburg office was opened. In the past, lawyers and their clients from the Valley had to travel to Corpus Christi to argue their cases.
"It was too much of a burden on Valley people to travel all the way to Corpus," he said. "Now everyone in the northern part of the district goes to Corpus and the ones in the southern part go to Edinburg."
Getting the legislature to fund a court in Edinburg wasn't easy, he said. The past chief justice was not one to ask the legislators in Austin for money to establish one there.
"In a sense, as a chief justice, you have to be a lobbyist," he said. "I lobbied hard to get a court in Edinburg and to update our computer system to provide more access to the court for lawyers and for the public."
Although he says he is by no means a "computer guru" or a tech geek," Valdez said he has updated the 13th Court of Appeals so that now anyone who goes to the website can click on for information related to their case. Not only that, but he has also expedited the time a decision on a case goes on line.
"We've got it to the point where once a decision is made, it immediately goes online so that interested parties can learn the outcome," he said. Valdez, as did many local attorneys and jurists of his time (he's 59), attended Texas A&I University in Kingsville.
He later obtained his law degree from Texas Southern University, in Houston, in 1979. Later, he served as an Assistant District Attorney in Cameron County.
He was elected to the Cameron County Court-At-Law No. 1. In 1986, he was elected to the 357th District Court of both Cameron and Willacy counties and also served as the local Administrative Judge of District Courts for Cameron and Willacy counties.
He held both positions until being elected to the 13th Court of Appeals.
Although he has received many honors and awards during his career such as the “Youngest Judge” of County Courts-At-Law in the State of Texas, the “Hispanic Of The Year” by Image of Brownsville, the “Outstanding Citizen” from Harlingen Jaycees, was elected president of the student body of Texas A&I University, and Pro Bono Honoree by the Cameron County Pro Bono Project, there is one he treasures above all.
"I was named Exemplary Former Migrant Student by the Texas Education Agency," he said pushing away his empty soup bowl. "Those of us who remember going to migrant school as kids know that we went from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. in segregated schools so that school districts could make up the money they lost as a result of us being gone up north early and returning late. That system was later declared unconstitutional."
Those lessons he experienced with the simple hoe in the hard Plains of Nebraska apprently have served him well.