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Bernalillo County sheriff's Sgt. Curtis Sanchez (left) and Deputy Arturo Maldonado enter an apartment with guns at the ready. As members of the Sheriff's Department Civil Unit, which oversees court-ordered evictions and debt collection, they say they're never quite sure what to expect when they enter someone's home.

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Bernalillo County sheriff's Deputy Arturo Maldonado and Sgt. Curtis Sanchez know not to open the refrigerators, especially if the lights are off.

A dark apartment likely means the tenants didn't pay the electric bill before they fled in the middle of the night to avoid paying rent.

In many apartments they visit to serve eviction notices, the officers are greeted with the smell of rotting milk and food in the refrigerator.

The Sheriff's Department's Civil Unit also finds couches (hard to move out without being noticed), artificial Christmas trees and animal litter boxes.

The unit's eight deputies are the government's repo men.

In addition to overseeing an average of 150 court-ordered evictions a month, they serve restraining orders and collect court-ordered debt — either through payment on site or by boxing up items worth more than the debt, right then and there, and hauling it off for auction.

It's sometimes a depressing job, Sanchez said, especially evicting families in the winter or families that have have innocently fallen on hard times despite the best intentions.

But most of the evicted don't have the best intentions or the straightest priorities, said Maldonado.

"You'll go in and see big-screen TVs and electronics," Maldonado said. "They can buy that but they can't pay rent?"

And most of the evicted have children, Maldonado said.

"We get all kinds, but it's sad when there are kids," he said.

And scary.

Because deputies in the unit don't know who might be in the room they are clearing out, they draw their guns at the door as they knock. They use keys provided by the court to open the home, then sweep through, taking anyone inside to the floor because the people didn't present themselves right away.

"Nothing is routine about it," said Sanchez.

People have killed themselves as deputies served them with an eviction notice, Sanchez said.

Others yell, curse and blame the deputies for their own failure to pay rent, Maldonado said.

"It's always interesting," said Sanchez. "This is where all the guys used to come to retire. I came from homicide because it was someplace I wanted to learn, because nobody knows this stuff."

Did you know, he asked, that deputies have collected debt from Wal-Mart after a store failed to garnish an employee's wages?

Deputies have walked through big-box stores that didn't want to write a check for the debt and taken items off the shelves.

In enforcing court-ordered debt collection, the deputies arrive at an individual's home or a business and take cash or payment equal to the amount owed.

If that isn't possible, the deputies scour the property looking for valuable items, and take items they estimate are worth three times more than the debt.

Sanchez says he's tried to get department funding to send his deputies to appraisal school so they are better trained at collecting items. That hasn't happened yet, so the officers use their own judgment when determining how much property to seize to satisfy the debt.

The items are sold at the department's monthly auction, but usually fetch less than their true value, he said. The money is given to the person owed, but it is often less than the original debt, Sanchez said.

In that case, the person owed can seek another court order for the deputies to carry out.

"People don't know we do this," he said.

And not a lot of people know about the department's auctions.

"We just had a guy buy about $50,000 worth of stuff for $2,300," Sanchez said.

Deputies have sold off vehicles, windshields, soda machines, yard fountains, pavers and electronics — even gravel, though the deputies don't have a trailer or truck to haul it with.

"We juke and jive to get it all," Sanchez said.

Sanchez is in charge of advertising the monthly auctions.

He said he tells each debtor they can come to the auctions and bid on their own stuff, though few do.

"We're amazed at what people get for cheap. Then if they (the person owed) wants more, they can go get more. It's a little unfair," Sanchez said. "But we enforce court orders. That's what we do."