Chemistry teacher Juan Campos faces a classroom with rows and rows of desks. In the back are tables full of chemicals for his next class. Campos once used chemicals in a different way. He was a drug analyst, facing many challenges, including keeping his family safe while dealing with criminal cases that involve different types of drugs. Campos has a wife, a son and a newborn child. He has a steady job as a chemistry teacher and he is happy with his career and family life right now.

“Being a drug analyst, we [didn’t] ‘go into the field,’ so to speak, and we didn’t have to go to crime scenes or any of that,” Campos said. “It did affect our families, in the sense [that] you didn’t know who was on the jury, so you never knew who you [would run] into in the street. You didn’t really wanna tell a lot of people what you did. I talk about it now, only because it’s been a few years since I’ve been out of it, and I’m more comfortable now [that] my cases have been processed.”

Since he usually had to analyze drugs for cases before they were made public, Campos knew of these events before they happened. He knew the risk that came with each trial and each detail in the trial. He may be off the job for now, but there is still a shadow of concern that lurks in his life.

“There were a lot of times I was aware of things before they got to the news,” Campos said. “You just don’t let people know about that kind of stuff. There [were] also a few times when there were some trials that I knew about. I wasn’t particularly involved in them, but I just knew what was going on, and it makes you worry for your family. That’s one of the reasons I don’t tell people where I work, because you never know. I can tell you about the job, but I would never tell you where I actually worked, because it is a safety concern. Even now I still have to think about that.”
There were times when Campos had to put his drug analyst job on hold for his family. He struggled with a case in Fort Hood due to a new addition to the family.

“There was a time where I had to go testify at a court martial in Fort Hood for two days, and rather than me being gone for two days because I had a newborn, I ended up driving two and half hours to Fort Hood, every day for two days,” Campos said. “I didn’t want to miss home, especially with a new baby. They let me, because it was going to be cheaper. They worked with me.”

Campos constantly had to change plans to fit around his busy schedule.

“There were a lot of times when we got called for cases, and you never [knew] when, you never [knew] why,” Campos said. “You really never knew what the day was going to bring. One day you were in the lab, and the next day, they brought you hundreds of pounds of marijuana. And you had to analyze it, and your day was gonna be spent outside working that particular case.”

His family life was a matter of what his day looked like in his job. Whatever his job wanted him to do, he had to follow it with no questions asked by his family, particularly his wife.

“I had to always keep my wife happy,” Campos said. “I couldn’t tell her what I was doing, but I had to tell her, ‘Hey, I may not be home for lunch today. If I’m in McKinney, and I’m done testifying at 5, I have to go all the way back to the lab for my car. It was tricky, but I had to balance it out one way or another.”

Campos makes many important decisions with his wife about his job and his family. When working on his education, Campos and his wife had to make tough decisions about how they were going to raise their kids and how Campos was going to be able to fit in time for his kids.

“I think you have to put your values at the forefront of your decisions, and I know one of the things that my wife and I talked about at the very beginning was that we wanted be there for our kids,” Campos said. “I was so close to getting my degree, and I just had to finish. I still had to work. Even though she had to sacrifice time with me, [and] obviously, I sacrificed time with my son, it paid off.”

After so much work was done, the payoff was worth it for Campos and his family. He was able to get his degree and make a better life. All of the open communication between Campos and his family only helped them in the end.

“We were able to move to Dallas from the forensics job, [and] I was able to go into teaching,” Campos said. “So if it [weren’t] for that little sacrifice, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. That’s you talking to your family saying, ‘Hey, we want this, and these are the steps to get there.’ Ultimately our goal was just for us to be in a good spot for us to have family time. I still have family time, and I’m able to come home at a reasonable time and hang out with my kids. You just gotta work it out, one way or another.”

After Campos made a better life for his family and himself, he said he is a firm believer of balance in life.

“I think that life is an equation, and sometimes it’s balanced, and sometimes it’s not,” Campos said. “You have to balance it out. One thing that I see is that nobody’s in the moment anymore. You’re just so wrapped up in all these different things, it’s important to just take a breath. When you’re split up in all these different directions you just get lost; you never build a past, and you never plan for the future. When you live in the moment, that’s when you can be balanced.”