Great news from Joey

During my spiked hair days in the late ‘80s, one of the celebrities I always enjoyed interviewing for this paper was Joey Albert.

Pretty and sweet, she was the recording industry’s Crush ng Bayan and had behind her a long string of hit songs like Tell Me, Minsan Pa, Ikaw Lang ang Mamahalin, I Remember the Boy and A Million Miles Away.

But even if her records and concerts were selling well, looking back, Joey Albert was basically dull copy. Maybe it was due to the fact that she didn’t have any scandal attached to her name and you know how it is with the entertainment press. In this profession, there is a thin line between being wholesome and being boring.

However, you have to give it to Joey Albert because even if I routinely called her Ms. Goody-Two Shoes, with her help, I’d like to think that I was successful in coming out with interesting feature stories on her and her activities. To begin with, she’s bright and intelligent and this more than makes up for her rather colorless (as per media’s standard) personal life.

And since I always have the habit of tracing the roots of the people I write about, I was able to discover – and this surprised even Joey herself – how one of her grandfathers, Dr. Jose Albert, gained fame in the local medical world because of his researches on beri-beri, a tropical disease that was quite common in this country especially in the old days.

Today, the Alberts are still in the medical books, not as authors anymore, but as research subjects – no thanks to the Alberts’ colon, a type of cancer that has sadly plagued most of the Albert descendants.

As early as the late ‘80s – when Joey Albert and I would still see each other often – she was already talking about mortality. Earlier, in 1982, her father succumbed to colon cancer at age 58. Three years later, her older sister Anna went the same way. She was only 33.

But Joey bravely forged ahead. She later married Ting Pacis and tried to slow down in her career to start her own family.

In 1995, her husband broached the idea of migrating to Canada – in Vancouver, to be exact. Like an obedient wife, she agreed although half-heartedly in the beginning, but decided to make a go of it because of an unfortunate twist in her life. Three months before they left for abroad, it was detected that she had cancer of the cervix. Devastated, she felt back then that if indeed her time was nearing, she might as well enjoy her two children – Trixie, now 14 and Marga, 11 – and the only way to do this was for the family to stay close together in a foreign country where, without the help of nannies, she can take care of the kids herself.

In Vancouver, she enjoyed her new life to the fullest – driving the kids to school, preparing their food (they like shepherd’s pie and pot roast), cleaning the house, doing the laundry and basically being a mother to the two kids and being Mrs. Pacis.

Lucky for her, she was able to enjoy family life to the hilt and as a big, big bonus, the cancer of the cervix went away after going through hysterectomy. (No, she didn’t even go through chemotherapy.)

But just when she thought her life was perfect again, another disaster struck: the much-dreaded cancer of the colon crept in. This time, she had to undergo chemotherapy sessions and although she didn’t lose her hair (but it did thin out), she was in terrible pain most of the time. (She tried to reach another cancer patient that time, the beloved Rio Diaz in San Francisco so that they may draw strength from each other, but Joey kept getting the wrong number.)

The good news, however, is that Joey Albert is well again after a surgery requiring half of her colon removed was performed on her. She was given a clean bill of health by her doctors in Canada last May 28 – a significant day in her life because that also marks the birth anniversary of her father. (She and her family also migrated to Canada on May 28, 1995).

And now, Joey is back in Manila to perform at the Captain’s Bar of the Mandarin Hotel in Makati on Aug. 19. (She will be performing with the Opera.) Two days before that – on Aug. 17 – she will also be launching a CD, Sandalwood, by Pinky Valdez, a former Assumption nun. (Joey finished Mass Communications at Assumption.)

Actually, Joey gets to visit Manila (and perform at the Captain’s Bar) practically every year since she left (except in 2003 because she was going through chemo sessions). However, returning to the Philippines for good is not one of her options at the moment. Sure, she can still have a singing career here (she has maintained her good looks), but no thank you, she’d rather enjoy her undisrupted peaceful family life in Vancouver away from all the annoying intrigues of show business.

At this point, she’s just happy to be well and alive and enjoying her third chance at life.