Like a telenovela

Ted Failon’s older daughter, Kaye, summed it up very correctly: “They are treating our tragedy like a telenovela.”

When news broke out last Wednesday that Ted’s wife, Trinidad, had been shot, most of us were kept busy coming up with our own malicious speculations. But when the police started rounding up helpless people — Ted and Trina’s relations and helpers — sympathies started pouring in for the family. The scenario became too tragic to make light of and our hearts just bled for the family and the people in that household.

As I pound on my keyboard now, I still couldn’t shake off my head the image of how the helpers and the driver (people who have been with Ted’s family for 13 years) were dragged to the precinct and put behind bars. If you ask me, their only crime was that they were too fastidious about cleaning up that mess. Me — I know that you are not supposed to tamper with the scene of the crime only because Dominic Dunne’s crime series is one of my favorite shows on television.

You can just imagine how this traumatic experience will continue haunting them. And the children — do they have to lose their mother this way and see their father harassed in such manner?

The past few days, I’ve been offering a prayer for Ted and family. I’m not saying this to show false piety, but so that other people may join in and also start praying for Ted, his late wife, their children and even the household help.

I can’t say that Ted and I are friends because I don’t remember us having coffee together or hanging out. But he and (now Vice President) Noli de Castro and even Jay Sonza were among those who showed me kindness during my early years with ABS-CBN. (Loren Legarda and Korina Sanchez also did the same, but they were already my friends even before I joined the broadcast industry.)

There was one incident in my life, in fact, that I would never forget and Ted was a big part of it. That time, I had been with ABS-CBN for only two weeks. I remember it well: It was early Saturday evening and I was going to do voice-over chores for Showbiz Lingo.

In the old Studio 3, Noli de Castro was doing a live interview with Fidel Ramos, who was only just a few months into his presidency. Unaware of what was going inside the ABS-CBN complex, I stepped into the premises with a bag of merienda for the Showbiz Lingo staff. I only had one foot in when members of the Presidential Security Group swooped down on me, snatched the plastic bag I was carrying and held me at bay. “Ano ito?!”(“What is this?!”) — they demanded to know. The way they pounced on me, it was like I had just smuggled in a huge loot of prohibited drugs from Colombia. They were rude — as in indescribably rude — that I was too stunned to react or even say anything. They behaved like they owned the place. Things also happened fast that I couldn’t even think of what I was going to do next.

It was a good thing that Ted came in — yes, like a superhero out to rescue a citizen in distress — and interceded on my behalf. The PSG people finally loosened their grip on me and let me go.

Recalling that incident now, I still shudder at the unpleasantness of it all. To think that that ugly experience happened only in a matter of minutes — three or even less. But the agony of Ted and Trina’s relatives and helpers under those men in uniform took so much longer. And they were (still are) in grief when that took place. It would probably take them long — heaven forbid a lifetime — before they recover emotionally from the trauma.  

It’s such an irony that this had to happen to Ted and his loved ones when he himself is always among the first to bail people out of their troubles. There ought to be something good to come out of this for Ted, otherwise I can say that there really is no justice in this world.

I did not write this piece to influence the outcome of the ongoing investigation surrounding Trinidad Etong’s mysterious death. Suicide or foul play — I don’t know. I just pray for truth to come out. But I do want to share with you that once upon a time, Ted did something good for me and that was one act of kindness I will never forget for the rest of my life.