Palmview man will accept national honor for community service

PALMVIEW — Jaime Chapa has no idea why he is getting an award.

But nevertheless, Chapa, a 57-year-old retired teacher and pastor, was to fly to Washington, D.C., today to accept a prestigious Jefferson Award for Public Service on Tuesday.

His son, Edward, nominated him for an “unsung hero” award in January, listing just a few of his Vietnam veteran father’s volunteer positions.

Chapa, a father of three, is an unpaid pastor at his Sullivan City church.

He ministers to hospital patients and prison inmates, murderers and their families.

And he stepped up as a municipal judge when Palmview didn’t have the cash to hire one.

For years he worked in McAllen schools, constantly seeking challenges and children in danger of falling through the cracks.

Chapa, in short, is the man the Jefferson Awards asked for in a series of Monitor advertisements: “someone who has touched the lives of others and has taken on challenges without hesitation.”

The awards, founded by a group that included former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1972, honor both national figures — senators, ex-presidents, entertainers and other leaders — and those who make an impact in their communities.

Local media outlets — including The Monitor — choose winners of the award from among nominees in their area.

Chapa, who says he is excited to show his wife, Rosa, the sights on her first trip to the nation’s capital, plans to accept the award Tuesday night on behalf of all prison ministers.

“I’m honored, but there are people who have been in the prison ministries longer than I have,” he said.

“People like us are working with no recognition. I’m one of the lucky ones.”

Chapa “got saved” and became a regular church member in 1972 in Sullivan City, on an evening when he and Rosa, his high school sweetheart, were too broke to get drunk.

Chapa had returned from Vietnam with post traumatic stress disorder, a condition that he has only acknowledged and sought help for in the last several years. He spent much of his time drinking and smoking, listless and angry.

He went across the street to a revival instead, and from then on was a regular church attendee and volunteer.

He started his church, El Faro Bible Church, in Sullivan because the city “is in need of a church. It’s a rough little place to be.”

One symptom of his PTSD, an anxiety disorder, is his drive to work.

Chapa threw himself into his vocations, taking on so many activities that his daughter was once called a liar at school when she told her class that her father was a teacher, a pastor, a magician, a school board member, a municipal judge and an immigration inspector at the bridge.

In the McAllen school district, Chapa continuously sought challenges. As a rare male elementary school teacher, he was offered his choice of schools and picked Escandon Elementary, with a high ratio of poor children.

When, a half-dozen years away from retirement, he heard that no one wanted to teach in the Social Adjustment Unit at the high school level, he got his special education certification and volunteered again.

“They told me, ‘You’ll get 14 students. By the end of the year, you’ll have two. They’ll either be dead or in jail or dropped out.’ “

He finished his first year with 10 students.

“God gave me a way with ‘em,” he said. “Some parents are still asking me to come back.”

Rosa sometimes complains when Chapa’s work follows him home. Throughout his life, he said, he has left work helping people all day to find a few friends and coworkers in need outside his office door and a few more waiting for him under a tree in his front yard.

But he has friends who know how to work the system, and a few political connections, and he can always pray for those who need it. In short, he’ll do what he can.

“They just want direction,” he said of his supplicants. “They don’t know how to start to work the system.”