Barajas Piles Up Victories On, Off Court : Tennis: Childhood struggles, bout with cancer help LAPD officer from Granada Hills put positive spin on life.

Jaime Barajas was reclining in a chair and toweling off after a convincing second-round victory last week in a pre-qualifying tournament for the Los Angeles Open when he was asked to recall his greatest victory.

Barajas--6 feet 1, 175 pounds, broad shoulders--had just trounced Arthur Tombakian of Los Angeles, 6-2, 6-4. He had routed his opponent with a vicious serve-and-volley attack. But the question drew a blank expression and he fell silent.

Barajas smiled weakly. He said he has never won a major tournament, never upset a nationally ranked player. There were no great victories.

But Barajas, a 30-year-old Granada Hills resident, has no regrets. He’s once again powerful, aggressive and thriving on top-flight competition. After cancer threatened his life nearly four years ago, the former Cal State Northridge singles player counts victories only in the game of life.

“I’ve had a lot of struggles in my life, but I’ve always been a real positive guy,” he said. “I look at it as a challenge--a chance to prove myself. Tennis is fun.”

Barajas was raised by migrant farmers and worked in fields as a child. Tennis was his vehicle out of that environment--it led to a college degree and, for a while, a career as a tennis instructor.

Through tennis, Barajas also met his wife, who came from a well-to-do family in Mexico. Four years ago, Barajas scrapped his career in tennis and joined the Los Angeles Police Department. He continued to patrol the courts as a player, though, winning five gold medals in the Police Olympics--including a mixed doubles title with his wife.

When he’s not chasing bad guys with the LAPD, Barajas canvasses the schoolyards of West L.A. for victims of child abuse.

“We encounter a lot of situations that could result in death,” Barajas said. “I’ve not had any close calls. But you never know. A simple family dispute can turn deadly.”

Barajas faced his own mortality before he had taken his first ride in a squad car: Doctors diagnosed cancer after a lymphoid tumor was discovered in his small intestine.

Surgery and six months of chemotherapy kept Barajas from graduating from the police academy with his class. Nearing the end of his third year in remission, Barajas shows no sign of a relapse.

In 1993, he had his best year on the Southern California senior circuit. He was ranked 23rd in men’s 30-and-over singles and 55th in open singles. “He’s a physical specimen and he’s made this incredible comeback,” said Annette Buck, director of adult and senior tennis for the Southern California Tennis Assn. “If he spent more time on the court, he’d be a lot more successful. But he’s a family man. For him, tennis is not the end-all, be-all.

“He’s got a wonderful family, (two) children and a career. He’s a complete person. Tennis is just a part of his life.”

Barajas was born in Mexico, the youngest of nine children. His parents moved to California when Jaime was a toddler. As a boy, he cut lettuce, broccoli and strawberries with the rest of his family in fields near Santa Maria.

He grew up watching “Dragnet” and “Adam 12” on television and dreamed of being a police officer. But tennis took over as his No. 1 love when two of his brothers introduced him to the sport. The two learned to play in Hawaii, where they worked in the construction business.

Jaime saw tennis as a means to a better way of life. He had two goals: to play college tennis and graduate. He accomplished both at Northridge. During his senior season in 1986, he played No. 4 singles and on a doubles team that beat a UNLV team featuring Scott Warner, who later played at Wimbledon.

Barajas was accomplished enough as a teen-ager to play in satellite pro tournaments in Mexico. He was playing in his native city of Jerez, Zacatecas, in 1983 when he met his wife, Lourdes Escobedo, who was born in Los Angeles and raised in Jerez. The two wrote each other for five years before marrying in 1988. “He was my only boyfriend,” she said.

She had grown up a tennis player in an affluent family. She knew he worked the fields as a boy and sensed that life had been difficult. Lourdes didn’t know much about adversity, she said, until Jaime’s cancer was diagnosed.

“My life was very easy to that point,” she said. “I always got whatever I wanted. I never suffered anything. He has suffered a lot. He worked at 6 or 7, even when he didn’t have to.”

Jaime said Lourdes, who was six months pregnant with their second child when they learned of the cancer, helped keep him strong through the frightening ordeal. That comes as a surprise to Lourdes. “I wasn’t strong--he gave me that strength,” she said. “I thought he was going to die. He made me strong because he’s so positive all the time.”

Said Barajas: “It was a wake-up call. It was a big surprise. Not too many people have it at that age. But I had a lot of faith and didn’t think about it too much. I went along with the program.

“I was very lucky.”

Barajas always has dedicated himself to helping others. After graduating, he became director of Northridge’s tennis facility and began teaching the game. After he switched to law enforcement, he was assigned to the schoolyards of West L.A. “There’s a lot of innocent victims out there,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who want help and direction.”

One thing that attracted Lourdes to Jaime, she said, was his compassion. Five minutes after the Jan. 17 earthquake rocked his Granada Hills home, Barajas began knocking on doors, making sure his neighbors were safe.

Soon he will be instructing new officers at the police academy, an assignment he chose because he enjoys teaching. And while he’s breaking in the new guys, Barajas can tell them there isn’t a cop around who can beat him on the tennis court.

Barajas is the reigning two-time open-division champion of the Police Olympics. But the competition is much stiffer in SCTA events. In eight previous L.A. Open pre-qualifying tournaments, Barajas had been eliminated after two matches.

But this year, he won his first two matches and pushed highly regarded Philip Tseng, losing, 7-5, 6-4, in a closely contested match. Tseng, a Harvard-Westlake High graduate, had just returned from the U.S. Olympic Festival and will play next year at Harvard.

One was left wondering how good Barajas might be if he devoted more time to the sport. Perhaps, Barajas wonders the same thing. If so, he doesn’t let on.

“I’m just enjoying having a good time,” he said.