California writer credits career, talent, inspiration to childhood and youth in MidlandSeptember 05, 2024

Roy Camarillo’s career choices were influenced in large part by a passion for writing. As a retired educator now living in northern California, he said that his love for teaching and writing, inspired by his time at Midland College, helped him make some pivotal life decisions. 

Born in Harlingen, Texas, his family moved to Midland in 1955 when he was two years old. His father, Eulalio Camarillo, was the second Mexican-American police officer hired by the Midland Police Department. 

Camarillo has fond memories of growing up in Midland on Ruby Street and attending St. Ann’s Catholic School where he made life-long friendships. After leaving St. Ann’s, Camarillo and approximately eight other St. Ann’s classmates attended St. Anthony’s Seminary in San Antonio. Had he stayed there, it could have led to ordination and the priesthood. 

“It was the 60’s and Haight-Ashbury was in full bloom,” Camarillo recalled.  “I remember thinking that if I ever met Ann Margaret, I was not going to be wearing a collar. I came home to Midland and graduated from Lee High School [now Legacy High School].” 

After high school, he attended Southwest Texas State University (SWTSU, now Texas State University) in San Marcos for about 18 months as a speech and drama major. Then he grew his hair long, dropped out of college and moved to Colorado.

During the time he lived in Colorado, Camarillo hitchhiked back home to Midland for visits. One cold November night when he was trying to get home for Thanksgiving, a man named Leroy Measles picked him up just south of Amarillo.

“Leroy said he would give me a ride as far as he was going, but didn’t say how far that would be,” Camarillo said. “It was just shy of midnight, my teeth were chattering from the cold, and I’d been walking for miles. I got in the truck, Leroy started driving,  pulled out a pistol and said he didn’t want any trouble. 

“I was starting to regret taking that ride, but we were barreling down a two-lane blacktop doing 70 mph, so there was no jumping out of that truck. Satisfied, he put away the pistol, and we started talking. Eventually, he grew philosophical and pulled a pint of whiskey from the glove box.  We sipped that all the way to Lubbock. 

“When we got to Lubbock, we pulled into a truck stop for coffee. I asked him how much farther he was going. He said, ‘Remember where I picked you up? I live about three miles south of there.’ He had driven 120 miles out of his way just trying to help me get home safely! 

“Before we parted ways, however, Leroy made me promise him that I would quit wasting time and get back in school. I kept that promise. I think that night, my guardian angel showed up armed, a little drunk and driving a pickup.” 

Camarillo’s experience that evening would later earn him an award for an article he wrote entitled “Timeless Traveler” in the Midland College Chaparral Magazine literary journal, Fall 1974. 

Once back home in Midland in 1973, Camarillo enrolled in Midland College taking advantage of a journalism scholarship.  Classes were held in a strip of buildings on Andrews Highway while ground was being levelled and buildings were being built on what is now the main campus on Garfield Street.

“I studied writing and learned photography, and our publication won some awards,” he said.  “I was reading John D. MacDonald, Trevanian, Vonnegut and Jean Shepherd and learning to tell a story. My time at Midland College helped me focus on writing. I transferred back to SWTSU and graduated in 1977 with a teaching degree and a major in journalism. After college, I took a job at KMND in Midland writing radio advertising.” 

During the time that Camarillo was in college and beginning his career, a fellow Midlander and close friend, Randy Cordray, moved to Los Angeles where he was working in the television industry. In 1980 Cordray convinced Camarillo that Hollywood was always looking for writers and that he should move to Los Angeles. 

“I packed everything I owned into a Honda, drove to LA and arrived when it seemed both the television and movie industries decided to go on strike,” Camarillo said. “I went months without a job and was quickly running out of money, so I took employment as a security guard in East LA for $3.10/hour. Being mostly homeless, I worked double and triple shifts and slept on the office couch. They made me a manager after the first month. 

“One night, one of the guards at a local defense plant got drunk and started firing his gun into the air. I drove to the plant to take care of the situation, and I wrote a detailed incident report to the plant security manager convinced that we were going to lose that contract. However, he read my report, realized I could read and write and hired me that same day. So, instead of becoming a contract writer in Hollywood, I was suddenly a technical writer in the defense industry!” 

Two years after that, Camarillo became a security specialist and technical writer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the California Institute of Technology.  As such, he worked with the Department of the Army and governmental agencies to write classification guidelines. 

Approximately 12 years later, Camarillo worked with a Los Angeles city agency that was downsizing and laying off hundreds of employees.  He was sent there on loan to help the employees prepare resumes for other jobs.

“Some of those people had been in the same job for decades,” he recalled, “They woke up one morning to a pink slip. Grown men stood crying. For three days I went from one to the next, helping them to identify their skills to support resumes that offered so little. It was as heartbreaking an experience as you can imagine. I just remember thinking that if I had taught these people in school, they wouldn’t be standing there with their hats in their hands.” 

That experience was a game-changer for Camarillo.  He left the defense industry and joined the Los Angeles Unified School District. Over a span of years, he worked in various positions as a junior high and high school English and journalism teacher, principal and a teacher of at-risk students. In his spare time, he earned his Master of Arts degree in Education. 

In time, Camarillo became a school principal in Sonoma County, CA. Now a father of two daughters, he did his best to celebrate education, introducing spelling bees and science fairs to his schools. 

“I encouraged teachers to think outside the box, because we’re living in a time where we need to prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist,” he said.  “However, the harsher realities of school administration set in. I was going toe to toe with school boards, superintendents and teachers’ unions. I was wishing I had never left the classroom. One day, my doctor said it was no longer healthy to do what I was doing, so I resigned my position.  My wife and I rented out our home and moved with our two elementary school-age girls to Jerusalem, Israel for a year.

“It was a wonderful experience for us. I spent a lot of time in the old walled city, walking and studying history. It was there that I asked myself that fateful question: ‘If you knew you could not fail, what would you want to do with the rest of your life?’ For me, the answer was ‘Write.’ Maybe I couldn’t write stories for a living, but I had to do a little every day.”

A year later, when the family returned to northern California, Camarillo accepted a job working as a corporate trainer and curriculum writer for a defense contractor. 

“For the next ten years I traveled every week and taught people in 37 states how to conduct background investigations,” he explained.  “I made it a point to explore the cities and new areas I was visiting, gathering ideas for stories.” 

By the time he retired, he had finished writing two novels and 15 short stories. A gothic horror tale Her Loving Touch will be published this year by Briar Press.

Camarillo’s most recent short story is one of his favorites. It takes place in the West Texas oilfields in the mid-1950s. 

“It’s about a young family with little money but much love,” he said. “The father works on a rig and can’t be with his family on Thanksgiving Day. It’s my homage to West Texas, and the hardscrabble life so many faced. 

“I had a conversation back in high school with Ken Allaire, my best buddy from day one of the first grade, whose dad was a driller on a rig. Remembering his dad having to work one Thanksgiving, he said to me, ‘You know, there’s somebody out there on a rig right now eating a turkey TV dinner and probably thinking he’s the luckiest guy, enjoying the best meal around.’” 

His friend’s memorable one-liner was the inspiration for “Tin Foil Gratitude” which is published on the Midland College website in the “News” section with Camarillo’s permission and his invitation for all to read it.

At 71, Camarillo is now retired and enjoying life in California’s wine country, an hour north of the Golden Gate Bridge and 20 miles east of the Pacific Ocean. A bit of a ‘Renaissance man’, he enjoys trail running, hiking the Sierra Nevada, Mexican cooking and Zinfandel.  He also occasionally plays guitar in a band and hopes to join California ghost hunter Dave Mace on a few more investigations. For relaxation he grows bonsai and practices flintknapping arrowheads and spear points, “...using only rock, a bone and an antler.” And he writes. He gets up every morning and writes for hours. 

Whenever he’s in Midland, Camarillo runs around the Midland College main campus circle remembering when it was nothing more than wooden stakes in the ground with colored string and marking flags.