The story of Albus Brooks didn’t end on the losing end of Denver’s runoff election. To think that is to admit you don’t know the soon-to-be-ex city councilman.

College football star, pastor, community activist and charmed politician, the bright lights of his life have a way of hiding the dark corners he’s had to crawl out from again and again. Losing an election is just turning a page, he told me.

Brooks has always has been about getting back up, for a guy who is all about winning.

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A Southern California kid, Brooks landed in the Rockies in 1997, a blue chip defensive back who signed with the University of Colorado. Sports Illustrated once called him one of the hardest hitters in college football.

But a bad knee hit him back, and he watched his pro football dreams disappear.

“I had agents telling me I would go play in the NFL, but I blew out my knee, and the guy behind me, Michael Lewis, signed a $10 million contract, and I had to watch that,” Brooks said. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

He lost the runoff by just 757 votes to newcomer Candi CdeBaca, in a year that saw three incumbents lose.

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Brooks was widely considered a future mayor, if not a rising star in the state Democratic Party.

Brooks has faced bigger obstacles and more painful setbacks.

He turned 40 in March. Books already has beaten bone cancer — twice. He announced on his Facebook page in 2016 that a tumor the size of a cantaloupe had been discovered in his back. Removed, it weighed 15 pounds. Last year he had to be a recurrence of the illness.

All the while, he continued to serve perhaps the city’s most dynamic and diverse districts, while raising three small children.

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And then, three years ago, as Brooks was about to begin his cancer treatment, his father, Perry Brooks Sr., spoke with him on the phone, then collapsed with a massive heart attack a few minutes later, while out doing lawn work. He was 72. He was his son’s mentor, inspiration and best friend.

If there’s a need for even more perspective on fate and faith, Brooks can think of T.J. Cunningham, another former CU defensive back who was a mentor to Brooks.

Cunningham was an assistant principal at an Aurora high school, until he was shot to death in February by a neighbor in a long-simmering dispute over a parking spot.

Cunningham’s good deeds and good intentions were silenced in three muzzle flashes of his neighbor’s gun.

Brooks values the importance of mentors. He plans to start a foundation in his father’s name to “work with black and brown boys and on social and emotional wellness, economic opportunity and closing the achievement gap and funding some of those efforts around the city.”

His faith and his experience tell him that losing a dream has the power to wake a person up to new and better opportunities.

Brooks helped John Hickenlooper, then Denver’s mayor, get elected governor in 2010, and the next year Brooks won a seat on the City Council against from a field of 39 candidates.

He’s proud to have helped to decriminalize pot for people younger than 21 and to have worked on affordable housing and more funding for Denver preschools.

He said it’s exciting to see people without much money get a chance to succeed, starting with a good place to live that they can afford.

He was excited about a Habitat for Humanity program for affordable housing that he is working on with former Gov. Bill Ritter, state Rep. Alex Valdez, Denver City Councilman Paul Kashmann and other leaders. “It’s a bunch of us. It’s good,” he said.

He won’t let up working on affordable housing, he said, just because he’s no longer in office.

“It’s exciting to get the chance to see people who are of low and middle income thrive and be a part of our economy,” Brooks told me.

Brooks also hopes eventually to write a book about Denver politics.

“It’s an interesting time in politics, nationally and locally,” he said. “I’m a pro-growth progressive, and I think that’s problematic for a lot of people.

“But there’s nothing I regret about my time running,” he said. “And there are a lot of things I believed in that I’m going to continue working on. That doesn’t change. I’ll just do it from the private sector instead of elected office.”

He saw the defeat as simply a sign to do something else.

“I don’t see this as a loss,” he said of the election. “I see this as a learning experience, the turning of a chapter, the end of an era in my life, but I’m more excited about the next opportunity.”

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