Rep. Bret Roberts once thought he’d have to be nuts to run for a seat at the Legislature.

When a friend first approached him about the idea, he laughed it off. He couldn’t think of himself as a politician – he still can’t even after more than 100 days as a member of the House of Representatives.

But one month and one legislative vacancy later, he was asked again. The reality set in that he had a chance to do a good thing. And now, as the freshman Republican from Maricopa in Legislative District 11 put it, “Here we are.”

Let’s start from the very beginning. You were born in Ohio and moved around a lot.

We were either chasing a job for my mother or my father. We lived in Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Minnesota … Strangely enough, I didn’t like seeing my birthday come around because a lot of times – which coincidentally, I share the same birthday with my father – we would end up moving. I hated seeing my birthday come around because I was so afraid we were going to move! But moving around a lot, in one school I could be more associated with this particular group, then I was in another, and after doing that for a while growing up, you eventually find out who you are a lot faster. You see who everybody is, and you tend to mature a lot faster. It’s very similar, I guess, to being a military child, but we weren’t in the military.

Your wife is from Venezuela. How did you meet?

We met working at Chase. … When we met, we were both loan officers, so that’s how we met.

Loans don’t sound particularly romantic.

No, but it was a call center environment – people getting together after work. She was on the Spanish team, and I used to walk by there to get to my desk. And that’s how we met. … My wife supports what I do because she comes from Venezuela. She has seen what politics can do.

You also have a law enforcement background. How did you mesh those two?

I have a very diverse background. That’s one of the reasons I think the Legislature is a good fit for me, because I’ve done quite a few different things in my adult life. But going from banking to law enforcement – oddly enough, one of my co-workers at Chase was a retired Phoenix firefighter. I have family members that are volunteer firefighters in Ohio. And we were talking about how way back when it was easier to get onto the fire department. And he told me that for people who want to get into that kind of thing, he always recommended to look at law enforcement. It piqued my interest, and eventually, I decided to go that route. I went to work for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office as a detention officer… just to get my feet wet.

It took me a long time to make the decision to leave MCSO. I look at it as a family. Every family has issues, but there’s a camaraderie and a brotherhood there. You feel like you are a part of something. But I was there in the downturn of the economy. … We weren’t seeing any raises at the time. We were losing shift differentials. Insurance costs were going up. We were going backwards, and I had the opportunity to go back to the mortgage industry. Back to a normal schedule, working during the day, having more time with the family, plus I could increase my salary by about $10,000.

Did your work there contribute to you later serving as constable in Pinal County?

I definitely learned a lot there, and yeah, oddly enough, through another conversation with a co-worker I learned about the constable’s office. One of the guys that I worked with had helped someone else run for that position, so that planted a seed in my mind. … I eventually ran for that position and held that position for four years. Then when Senator [Steve] Smith decided to run for Congress, that opened up another opportunity. … Representative [Mark] Finchem and Senator [Vince] Leach chose me to fill that spot.

You mentioned camaraderie in the law enforcement community. Do you find anything like that here at the Legislature?

I think there is a level of camaraderie. It’s not quite the same as being in a law enforcement agency. That’s a different level of seriousness.

Your life doesn’t depend on your House colleagues.

Right. Because when you go to work, whether you’re a detention officer, corrections officer, you’re out on the street, the most important thing is that you come home every day. Here, there is more of an individualized aspect. We work together as a team, but at the same time, we have to worry about our district. Like it or not, there’s a forced sense of individualism there.

What’s been your experience as a freshman? It’s been quite the session.

It has, but for me, we as freshmen don’t know what to expect. This is the first session we’ve seen, so we don’t know to expect anything different. It’s kind of like in the corporate environment, a lot of times people don’t want to bring anybody in from the industry because they’ve learned bad habits. … I would say there’s been a lot of things to learn as far as things you didn’t know to expect.

I enjoy being here. It’s fun. There are a lot of issues that come up that you wouldn’t know anything about unless you’re involved in the process.