Recently promoted Patrol Sergeant Paul Lazo has been on the Carbondale police force since 2019, and serves with an innate dedication to protect his community, and that means everyone.
He and his family moved from Peru when Lazo was 7 years old. They lived in California for two years, where his dad filled vending machines for about $5 an hour in downtown Los Angeles, and the family of four shared a one bedroom apartment.
Lazo grew up in a religious household, his grandfather having been a pastor in the Church of Seventh-day Adventists. That’s also what brought the family to the Valley, when Lazo’s father was offered a position in a parish here.
As a youngster, Lazo attended the former Columbine Christian School in Glenwood Springs. “It was a one room school,” he recalled, and there was one teacher: Pam Dupper. “She’s still one of my mentors and friends.” For high school, he and his brother attended an Adventists boarding school in Loveland.
There were work programs there to help pay off tuition, so for a summer Lazo worked as a literature evangelist. “I’d knock door-to-door selling Seventh-day Adventist books … It was terrifying,” he laughed. The brothers went on to attend Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. He remains very close with his brother, who also works in human service as a registered nurse.
Before becoming a peace officer, Lazo worked for Roaring Fork Family Physicians as a medical assistant. He said that he attributes his forte of connecting with people to working with Dr. Rick Harrington. “He was helpful, flexible and wasn’t about rules and organization or money, [but about] trying to help each other. I learned that from Rick Harrington.”
Former Chief of Police Gene Schilling also saw the good in Lazo, and offered him a job when he was less than a week in at the Colorado Law Enforcement Training Academy at Colorado Mountain College Spring Valley. “I was essentially a cadet while I was going through the police academy at CMC,” he told The Sopris Sun. “We graduated on a Friday, and on Monday morning I was in the office.”
You wouldn’t guess it today, but Lazo relayed he once was relatively quiet and timid. Policing helped him crawl out of his shell, though. The reality of the job is that officers are regularly faced with challenging, negative situations, and Lazo’s approach is to reach for at least a more positive outcome. The means of getting there isn’t a walk in the park and can take an emotional toll.
“I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of trauma that we have to take in and keep to ourselves,” he stated, “so that everybody else doesn’t have to see it or feel it.”
The four years leading up to Lazo’s current role, he held down the fort at Roaring Fork High School as its school resource officer. “It turned me a little bit more toward [being] community oriented,” he said of that time. Dealing with young people, he didn’t address poor behavior for the sake of punishment, but delved into the “why” behind a child’s actions. “It was more of a ‘How can we help you make a better choice in the future?’” He said the experience influenced the way he approaches his new position.
Lazo was selected out of four applicants to be promoted as patrol sergeant earlier this year. There is one other patrol sergeant, Ciara Chacon. They are the direct supervisors of officers and report to the lieutenant and chief. The goal of the position is to make sure “we’re doing the right thing, for the right reason at the right time,” Lazo summarized.
And the shifts for a patrol sergeant are somewhat of a sacrifice: on duty three to four nights a week, from 3pm to 3am. The reasoning there is that “high liability” type calls are more frequent at night.
Today, there are lots of people living in fear of being deported, and Lazo understands those feelings on a personal level. He himself lived in fear of being removed from the United States for the better part of a quarter-century. He did get his green card, however, and eventually, after much time and money, Lazo became an American citizen in 2024. The Town of Carbondale, valuing Lazo’s professionalism, helped pay for those legal fees — something he certainly doesn’t take for granted.
“I grew up fearing the police because I felt like the police were somehow associated with immigration,” he shared. Knowing now that law enforcement doesn’t necessarily have to work with immigration enforcement — which is the sentiment and policy at CPD — he wants all community members to feel comfortable calling the department for help.
“If the undocumented part of our community fears the police, then they don’t report crimes,” he passionately lamented. “They stay victims, without resources, without justice.”
Lazo is one of two CPD officers who are bilingual, but he said his fellow officers are making efforts to practice and learn some key words and phrases. The need for bilingual officers is great, with many interactions occurring between victims or suspects who are monolingual Spanish speakers.
“I think one of the biggest parts [of this job] is the human connection and being able to talk to people,” Lazo concluded. “I think where it goes wrong is when people put on the uniform and they think they’re better than somebody.”