Clovis municipal judge retiring

CLOVIS — With a prior legal career, Jan Garrett was confident she would be able to fill the city’s municipal judge position without much problem.

Then she got elected, and she had to do the job.

“I thought, because I had spent so much time in the courtroom, that it would be a lot easier than it actually was,” Garrett said. “It turns out there was a big difference between watching someone else do it and doing it myself.”

She learned, and the voters approved, so much that she was re-elected four times. A year into her fifth term, Garrett is retiring from the city post.

“I wanted to leave while I was still enjoying it, while I still felt I was effective,” Garrett said Friday. “I felt like it was a time with my family where it was time to do it.”

Her final day on the bench will be April 4. City Manager Justin Howalt said Vicki Kelley has been chosen to serve as a temporary judge.

Plenty has changed since Garrett won that municipal election in 2002, taking 36 percent of the vote that featured 10 candidates — there were 1,826 votes for Garrett, 1,020 for Kelley and 947 for Allan Collier with nobody else reaching 300 votes. Some of the work has gone online, where you can pay for your citations on the city website.

But much of the work is still done 7 a.m. weekdays, where Garrett balances being a servant to the community at large and to every person who comes in front of her with a case.

“I have had the opportunity through this work to help people with lots of things, to help them improve in positive ways in their lives, and I’ve developed a great relationship with some of the people I’ve seen in court,” Garrett said. “As I come to the end of it, I would hope that every person that I saw knew I cared about them individually, and their story, and their problems.”

The difficult part, she said, is when somebody who goes through her court dies of a drug overdose.

“It just has broken my heart when I’ve gotten to know people through various court cases,” Garrett said. “We’ve done rehab, we’ve done counseling, and we spent a lot of time together doing everything I could think of. When they lose their lives to addiction, it’s just a terrible loss.”

Garrett doesn’t like the impression she goes easy on people, but more than a few citizens go in facing a traffic citation and leave with only court costs.

“If I can, and it’s a first offense, I do like to show grace to people,” Garrett said. “I guess that’s because I make mistakes myself, and God gives me grace. I feel I should give grace to others.”

When asked what advice she would give to her successor, Garrett first said she keeps a quote in her office from former judge Harold R. Medina: “After all is said and done, we cannot deny the fact that a judge is almost of necessity surrounded by people who keep telling him what a wonderful fellow he is. And if he once begins to believe it, he is a lost soul.”

Upon reflection, Garrett said her advice boiled down to three things — believe the best of everybody, don’t give up on anybody, and never underestimate the power a judge has to help a person.

The Clovis city commission has 30 days from the point of the vacancy to appoint a new judge who will serve until next year’s municipal election, when the remaining two years of the term will on the ballot.

“I would like to commend Judge Garrett for her years of service to the community as the city’s municipal judge,” Mayor David Lansford said in a release from the city. “Judge Garrett has performed her judicial duties with consummate skill and integrity, and has been an outstanding elected official.”