Thursday, April 05, 2007 Cop is now a lawyer; out of 7, he survived bar exams By Jovy S. Taghoy Sun.Star Staff Reporter
DEDICATION, discipline and the will to succeed became the guiding principles of PO3 Juan Estrada Alpuerto to make it through the bar exams last September.
The results came out at 6 p.m. last Tuesday, and Alpuerto was one of the 1,893 law graduates who passed the exams. Of the seven policemen at the PNP Regional Office (PRO) 7 headquarters who took the tests, only Alpuerto passed.
Afraid to learn about his fate in the test, Alpuerto turned off his cellular phone past 5 p.m. before leaving the Regional Operations and Plans Division (ROPD) of the PRO 7, where he is assigned.
He did not go home straight away but instead went to a nearby store to have a few drinks “para mawala ang kakuyaw (to get rid of my jitters).”
Later, he turned on his phone. He got his first text message at 7:30 p.m. It came from a colleague congratulating him for passing the bar.
He did not take it seriously at first, until another colleague called him to inform him about the good news.
It was then that he broke into tears.
“I feel very lucky to have passed the examination. This is my destiny,” said Alpuerto, who was all smiles when interviewed by Sun.Star Cebu yesterday.
Alpuerto said he ran back to the regional headquarters where he received the warm congratulations from the rest of his colleagues, including Chief Supt. Ronald Roderos, deputy regional director for administration.
Alpuerto, 37, who was born in Dumanjug, Cebu, is married to Hygina. They live in Cebu City.
He joined the police service on July 16, 1996.
Recognizing the need to know more about different laws as part of being a policeman, Alpuerto said he was challenged to take up law at the University of the Visayas (UV) in 2002. He graduated in March 2006.
It was his first attempt to take the exam. Passing the exam, though, was no easy feat for Alpuerto.
He juggled the demands of his job and the review.
“Sometimes I would study in the bathroom or whenever I had free time in the office, I would find a quiet place in the corner where I would study. It’s all about maximizing your time,” he said in Cebuano.
Alpuerto is assigned at the tactical operations center, the busiest section of the ROPD, where he is in charge of monitoring the arrival of very important persons, disseminating the regional director’s directives and compiling spot reports from all the police offices and stations in Central Visayas and forwarding these to Camp Crame.
“With prayers and perseverance, you will come out victorious,” Alpuerto said.
For Alpuerto, joining the police service and becoming a lawyer also proved that poverty is not a hindrance to success.
He said he was an out-of-school youth because his parents could not afford to let him continue after his first year of high school.
With the help of his sister five years later, he was able to take an exam giving out-of-school youths the chance to continue schooling and get accelerated to college.
He passed and was enrolled directly to first year college.
He first took up a marine course but later shifted to computer science, also at UV.
Chief Supt. Roderos, who was one of the top officials who congratulated Alpuerto, said the latter only proved “that despite the obstacles, he can break free from being an ordinary policeman and become a winner one more time.”
“He has now become a winner one more time as a lawyer. The third time that he will become a winner is when he becomes an officer of the legal service (of the PRO 7) with the rank of senior inspector through lateral entry. He will jump again from PO3 to becoming a senior inspector. He will jump six ranks higher, including his pay,” Roderos said.
Alpuerto’s passing the exams qualifies him to apply for lateral entry, and he will be promoted to senior inspector.
Roderos advised the rest of the policemen not to be contented with their rank. “If Alpuerto can do it, then the other policemen can do it also,” he said.
