The anonymous caller wanted to know about interrogations of the two suspects. Alvarez had had the men moved from a jail cell to police headquarters so he could question them about a pair of killings he was investigating.
"He said, 'You transferred some of my guys who work for me. And I want you to let me know every time you go to see them,' " Alvarez recalled.
No money was offered, but Alvarez knew how the traffickers worked. They paid $3,000 upfront, he said, and $2,000 more each time a cop tipped them to a raid or gave other information.
"I told him, 'You should call someone else. I'm not that kind of person,' " Alvarez said. "He said, 'You're not going to listen to me? You're not going to do it?' "
Two weeks later, Alvarez got another call. It was his daughter, reporting that armed men had been seen outside their home. Alvarez asked a supervisor for protection. The supervisor shrugged and said there was nothing he could do.
Alvarez fled with his family, entering the U.S. at San Ysidro on visitor visas. He is living in Southern California, working at a supermarket.
He said Mexican police need more support and better pay to resist the cartels. Otherwise, Alvarez said, "There won't be any honest cops left."
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Officers targeted
An officer in the border city of Juarez, who asked to be identified only as Jesus, was on vacation last spring when his supervisor and a fellow officer were shot to death in the same truck Jesus drove when on duty.
A cartel had targeted members of the city's police force because many of them worked with the rival Juarez drug organization. The traffickers broadcast death threats over a stolen police radio.
In the weeks leading up to the killings, Jesus and fellow officers patrolled only in groups. He switched personal cars and never drove an official car home.
After the slayings, he reluctantly concluded that he had no future in Mexico law enforcement.
He is now living in Colorado, where he has applied for asylum.
"The reality is that I can't trust anybody in Mexico," Jesus said.
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A case of do or die
Police work was in Julio Ledezma's blood. His father was a police officer, and Ledezma was a mounted officer in Juarez before turning in his badge for something different: He moved 320 miles south and became a mariachi singer and vocal instructor in La Junta.
