So whatever happened to Tetchie?

Curtain-raisers:

• I want to congratulate my good friend Maribi Mapa-Garcia who’s participating in the 3 is Company painting exhibit with Fr. Armand Tangi, SSP, and Fr. Paul Yntig, SSP. The launching ceremony will be held this afternoon at Le Souffle French Restaurant, Amorsolo Square, Amorsolo Drive, Rockwell Center in Makati City. Proceeds from the exhibit (which runs until June 13) will go to the construction of a church in Silang, Cavite, a healing and formation center for Bethesda Seminarian Scholarship Funds.

• Hard Rock Café and NU 107 present The Dawn and the pop-alternative group Dictalicense in a special show on Thursday, May 25, 9:30 p.m. It’s going to be an all-night part. (For inquiries, call Hard Rock at 893-4661 to 64.)

• Reginald Salanga, director of Corporate Financial Reporting, Ingram Micro Inc., has pledged a P2,000 monthly allowance for Rebecca Lusterio who is being given a scholarship by Colegio de San Juan de Letran where she’ll enroll in Masscom. The allowance will last until Rebecca finishes the course.

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Last Monday, Funfare bannered the question Whatever happened to Aljo Bendijo? (a story that elicited all sorts of reactions from readers and people in the TV industry).

Today, Funfare poses the same question, So whatever happened to Tetchie (Agbayani)?

The answer is found in the June 5, 2006 issue of Newsbreak magazine which features Tetchie on the cover.

It will be recalled that Tetchie disappeared from the local showbiz scene on the heels of the brouhaha generated by her nude pictorial in the German edition of Playboy magazine in 1982. That pictorial (the first appearance by a Filipina in Playboy) "proved overwhelming and even traumatic" to Tetchie, according to the cover story written by J. Alwyn Alburo, and "may explain the start of her indifference, perhaps aversion, to fame."

It happened only three years after Tetchie finished runner-up in the 1979 Mutya Ng Pilipinas contest, which forced her to quit her studies at UST where she was taking up B.S. Architecture and served as her stepping stone to showbiz.

Tetchie went to the States and started a career in Hollywood, doing a few films (one of them Emerald Forest, produced and directed by John Boorman). She came home and resumed her rudely-interrupted local career but again disappeared when she gave birth to her daughter China, now 14.

So whatever happened to Tetchie since then?

After 17 years, she went back to school, this time at Ateneo de Manila University.

According to Alburo’s Newsbreak story, Tetchie, now 44, has tucked up a degree in B.S. Psychology from St. Joseph’s College (Quezon City) and is now working for a master’s degree in "arts in counselling and psychology," the same subject she’s teaching in the same school (where daughter China is enrolled).

In school, Tetchie downplays her being showbiz by using her real name, Visitacion Parado.

Is she turning her back on acting?

Not quite.

"Acting is a great pastime," Alburo quoted Tetchie (last seen recently in an ABS-CBN soap and as the mom of Sam Milby in Star Cinema’s Close to You) as saying, "a cathartic experience."

Tirso, Lynn mark 25th wedding year

Tirso Cruz III and his wife Lynn Ynchausti are marking their 25th wedding anniversary with a renewal of vows tomorrow, May 25, at a very private affair to which only very close friends have been invited.

Officiated by pastor Rev. Dr. Cornelio Castillo, the event will have as witnesses Susan Roces-Poe and Sen. Juan Ponce-Enrile, Lipa City Mayor Vilma Santos-Recto and David Mercado, and Christopher de Leon and wife Sandy Andolong.

Tirso and Lynn have a good reason to celebrate. They have three beautiful and well-brought-up children: TJ, 24, a La Salle International Studies graduate major in American History, now working; Bodie, 20, a La Salle Computer Science graduate, now also working; and Djanin, turning 18 in July, a Business Management junior also at La Salle.

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