NOOSE GROW TIGHTER AROUND SALAZAR, HERNANDEZES

By Juan Montoya
The woman who admits she took the civil service exam for the brother-in-law of Cameron County Pct. 2 commissioner Ernie Hernandez said that after she took it on orders from Human Resources director Robert Lopez and Hernandez's administrative assistant Raul Salazar, the latter came up to her desk and asked her if she "had done as I had been told to do."
Salazar was indicted by a Cameron County grand jury with two counts of tampering with a government document in the case.

Carmen Vera said was 27 at the time and had been and less than a year on the job – at the bottom of the HR totem pole – when she was ordered to take the examination after Roberto Cadriel. Cadriel is the brother of commissioner Hernandez's wife Norma. He had tried to pass the exam twice and had failed it miserably racking up two scores of 30 and 34, respectively. A passing score was 70.
Under questioning from Asst. DA Gustavo Garza, she said both Lopez and Salazar  were involved in telling her to take the third test in Cadriel's stead.
"Did you feel pressured at the time?" Garza asked her.
"I felt like I was going to lose my job. I have two kids I got to raise," Vera stammered.
The prosecution says the chain of events that caused turmoil on the HR staff was set off by the wishes of Ernie and Norma Hernandez to get Cadriel a job with the county.  Although the 56-year-old Cadriel suffers from a mental disability and his intelligence level has been judge to be at a fifth-grade level, he says that the commissioner told him that he would be getting a call from Salazar, his administrative assistant, to fill an application with the county for employment.
In previous testimony, Cadriel said that when he went to the Pct. 2 office, Salazar led him to the HR department around the corner on the same floor in the Dancy Building rotunda and introduced him to Lopez and then to staffer Jessica Olivares so he could take the computerized civil service exam. Cadriel has said in precious testimony at the trial that he can neither read nor write in English or Spanish.
Olivares said she walked Cadriel through operating a computer and noted that he did not know how to operate the "mouse" on the unit.
"I noticed that he didn't know how to use the computer, or the mouse," Olivares said.
Later, when Vera told her she had been told to take the test for Cadriel, Olivares said she noticed Vera was nervous and upset about taking the test.
"She told me she didn't want to do it," said Olivares. "She was scared and under pressure. She was scared of losing her job."
Nonetheless, when Olivares returned from collecting the office mail, she said she looked in the testing room and saw Vera "actually sitting down and took the test."
In response to the questions by Garza, Olivares said that the third time the test was taken in Cadriel's name the test was graded with a passing score of 86.
She said that only Lopez and co-worker Dalia Salinas had the authority to make an exception and allow an applicant to take a third exam after having failed it twice.
Both Olivares and Vera said that Salazar had the run of the HR office, walking in to Lopez's office and going to back where the testing was conducted. No other commissioners' administrative assistants had the same "free rein" to go about the office like Salazar, they both agreed.

Hernandez, originally scheduled to testify in his administrative assistant's trial, has claimed protection under the Fifth Amendment and said he is afraid he would incriminate himself if he deviates from the 31-page testimony before the grand jury.
He claimed that he was no-billed by the grand jury and was called before visiting judge Federico Hinojosa where he admitted that he was the object of an ongoing investigation and that the DA's office had not presented evidence against him before the grand jury.
"I didn't know what no-billed meant," Hernandez explained.
Norma Hernandez has also been subpoenaed to testify in the case.