It’s James Oswaldo Garcia’s 15th anniversary and the Reno Sheriff’s Department honors the deputy by taking him out to the desert for a surprise party. Garcia is blindfolded and handed his gun to take down a piñata.

Four shots and four misses. He’s given another chance, this time with the blindfold around his neck rather than covering his eyes. Garcia unloads the remaining bullets in his clip and still can’t take it down.

Then he snaps and tears down the piñata a, cursing amid laughter in the background. He places the piñata on the ground and holds it down with his foot, finishing the job at point-blank range.

Garcia goes off. He stomps around in a circle of rage, screaming. The camera pans across the Reno police force; everyone’s in shock.

That’s how they do it in Reno.

It’s just one of many hilarious scenes from the Comedy Central “Cops”-parody “Reno 911!” Carlos Alazraqui, a 43-year-old Sacramento State alum, plays Garcia – the small man who thinks he’s big.

“My experience growing up was my parents were from South America, but I was pretty much white,” said Alazraqui, whose parents are Argentinean, in a telephone interview. “I decided to add that element of a character that’s in cultural denial. … There’s sort of a self-hatred to him where he isn’t really proud of his culture. He’s more concerned about being a badass.”

Alazraqui channeled his college roommate to come up with the walking contradiction of a good ‘ol boy in the body of a Latino. Garcia, the raging deputy, is a 5-foot-8 firecracker with salt-and-pepper hair and the requisite cop mustache dominating his upper lip.

Deputy S. Jones, played by Cedric Yarbrough, is his partner. The ebony and ivory men play off each other with equal parts jokes and attacks. Their relationship is at times explosive.

“There’s a nice relationship there through the racial tension and the differences,” Alazraqui says. “They really like each other. I think that’s what comedy does, or working in a real force does. It makes strange bedfellows.”

Jones and Garcia will go at each other, but there’s evidently a partnership fostered through it all. While they may make fun of each in through racist remarks, no one else better do the same.

“That kind of stuff comes with being a family,” Yarbrough said in a telephone interview. “You guys can talk about each other, but when someone else comes into the group and talks about you, then it’s on.”

Jones is the smooth talking ladies man. He’s the Sam Malone of the Reno Sheriff’s Department, romancing everyone from Deputies Raineesha Williams and Clementine Johnson to a schoolteacher while working as a crossing guard and to even Lieutenant Jim Dangle.

And in contrast to Garcia, Jones is the calming voice of reason.

“Jones and Garcia are basically brothers from another mother,” Yarbrough said. “They want to beat each other’s ass, constantly, but they can’t because they have to work together. I think they are a lot more similar than they would care to wish that they were. They’ve got a sibling rivalry going on. It mostly stems from Garcia’s racism and Jones just having to put up with it and he knows that he has to work with this guy.”

While “Reno 911!” may be the first time Alazraqui has received consistent time in front of the camera, it isn’t his first time working on television.

Alazraqui has done cartoon and videogame voices since 1992 when he first broke into the industry as the namesake Australian wallaby on Nickelodeon’s “Rocko’s Modern Life.” Since then he’s worked on “Family Guy,” “Pokemon,” “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Spyro the Dragon” and he is also the voice behind the Taco Bell Chihuahua.

“It’s all theater of the mind,” Alazraqui said. “You don’t keep it so literal. … Comics, we make it up in our heads, all the time. We see the picture. We paint the picture.”

Voice work and sketch comedy are a natural progression for Alazraqui, who has been involved in standup comedy since 1983.

While studying recreation administration at Sac State, Alazraqui was originally goaded into comedy by one of his instructors. At Harry’s Bar & Grill, he fought through nervousness to place third in his first comedy competition. He continued to work on stage while pursuing jobs related to his field of study until 1990, when he dove headfirst into stand up.

“I’m much more my own personality now,” Alazraqui said. “I have much more of a point of view rather than trying to be clever and witty and speak with my audience.”

Molly Schminke, who books acts for the Punch Line in Sacramento and San Francisco, has worked with Alazraqui since 1994.

Schminke credited “Reno 911!” for exposing Alazraqui to an older demographic.

“Reno 911!” has definitely made him cross over from being just an act people might know if they were comedy fans to somebody that people know now just as fans of the show,” Schminke said. “It really broke him into the college market in a huge way.”

Schminke describes Alazraqui’s act as energetic with plenty of impressions. Alazraqui will even go into character as Deputy Garcia.

“Now that he’s got a face to go along with his talent, I think that that’s what’s really broken him wide open,” Schminke said. “We had him really recently at the San Francisco Punch Line and it was great.”

Perhaps the funniest thing about Alazraqui is when it’s obvious he’s having fun.

The bonus features on “The Complete First Season” DVD of “Reno 911!” includes outtakes of a scene where Garcia takes Johnson, played by Wendi McLendon-Covey, on a date.

Garcia, clad in a plaid collared shirt, is vying to become the father of Clementine’s unborn child. It starts with Garcia taking his order. In the episode, Garcia says, “I’ll take the vegetarian pizza and a quesadilla, chicken, and she will have something less than or of equal value.” It took Alazraqui and McLendon-Covery about 10 takes to get the joke out during the shoot. They just couldn’t keep from bursting into laughter.

“I had had that joke in my stand-up for a long time,” Alazraqui said. “That was the perfect time to throw out that joke. I don’t think I told Wendy at first. I thought I’d spring it on her and see how she reacted. She lost it. And then every time I’d reach for my pocket she’d start cracking up. Then when she’d start cracking up, I’d start cracking up. I had to get past that. It was just stupid.”

Of course that’s not the only time Alazraqui has had to get past giggling. Look closely in some scenes, past the mustache, and there’s Alazraqui about to lose it.

“The thing with Carlos is that he also cracks himself up,” Yarbrough said. “He’ll laugh at everybody else, sure, but he will crack himself over things he has said or within his own head. Something he’s going to say will crack himself up. I don’t know what’s going on in his head up there but it’s all kinds of shady.”

Nate Miller can be reached at [email protected].