Excuse me po, it's Mike Enriquez

He came to our interview on a rainy Friday afternoon with such high energy, after coming straight from raiding a gambling den. They managed to have it closed last year through his program Imbestigador, but got reports early this year saying it had reopened, and that they were even using his name to keep operations in the clear. With a no-nonsense look, he says it appears the policemen in the area are in cahoots with the illegal operations. This was my first time to meet him and I didn’t know what to expect from this award-winning broadcast journalist who works morning to evening — from radio show Saksi sa Dobol B to coverage throughout the day to primetime newscast 24 Oras. Here are 10 things you should know about Mike Enriquez.

1. His trademark line “hindi ko kayo tatantanan” was a phrase he just blurted out to his staff when they were covering the story of Kaye Lazaro, a little girl hit by a stray bullet that was later found to have been fired by a policeman on a drinking spree. The line stuck.

Travel partners for life: “My wife Baby and I love to travel together,” says Mike. Here they are together in Greece.

“I personally handled that story, and I saw Kaye’s condition. I told my staff, hindi natin ito tatantanan until we find that guy. And we did. Ever since then I said this is what Imbestigador is all about,” he recalls. If they don’t produce results then it is all for show, he says. It is a challenge to him and the whole team to have to live up to their tag line.

In real life, he doesn’t talk as fast or with that high-pitched voice you hear on radio and TV. He actually speaks in a calm but stern manner, with an excellent command of both English and Tagalog. “That’s a product of evolution, it’s not as if the first time I spoke on a microphone it was like that already,” he says of his 43-year career, having gone from sports to news to horse racing to talk shows and music shows. His DJ name was once “Baby Michael” (“That’s the name of my ex-girlfriend, now she sleeps with me every night,” he says of his wife Baby) and off-camera, he is known as “Booma” (“15 years ago I was 20 pounds heavier, and Booma was an elephant cartoon character.”) 

2. On the rivalry between GMA and ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs: “I don’t want to call it dirty, I want to call it rough.”

Getting a “scoop” is tougher these days he says, because aside from everything being digital and electronic, we have more and more citizen journalists. “Now it’s a matter of cultivating and encouraging as many sources as you can,” he shares. He is personally friends with journalists from rival networks like Che Che Lazaro, Karen Davila, Abner Mercado, and Luchi Cruz-Valdez.

On the issue of journalists being killed, he says: “The rate at which journalists are being killed and the rate at which killers are being jailed are so far (apart).” He says simple law enforcement is key. And second, “There’s not enough talk about raising the future generation of Filipinos with the right values, that’s why education is such a big deal to me, that’s where it all begins.”

Mike aboard a cable car in Santorini, Greece

3. Mike Enriquez in numbers:

500-plus: Number of staff of the RGMA Network, the radio subsidiary of GMA which he heads. They have 27 stations spread across 17 cities in the country.

20: Average number of students in his class when he used to teach broadcast management in DLSU.

85: His average grade when he was in college. “I was a very ordinary student.”

28: Number of awards he has won for broadcasting.

4: Time in the morning he wakes up every day.

4. One of his most memorable assignments was when he covered the war from Kuwait. “An Iraqi shot a missile across the bay into Kuwait. I saw all these people scampering. Military helicopters and fighter jets were circling around and navy vessels were in the horizon. My God, this is war.”

The missile exploded in one of the most upscale malls in Kuwait just a few blocks from where Mike was billeted. He had to run down 11 floors with his camera. Alone on assignment, he was his own cameraman, editor, and he would have to set up his own satellite phone for live coverage. He hired a Pinoy based in Kuwait who served as his light man and driver. As he was running to the mall, something struck him for a split second: “There’s something wrong with this picture, people are running away from the mall and I’m running towards it.” As soon as he got to the mall, he was surprised by what welcomed him. “Wasak na wasak yung mall, but you know how Filipinos are, yung mga Pinoy crew ng Starbucks, Burger King, KFC, when they saw me sabi nila ‘Saksi! Saksi! Mike Enriquez! Mike Enriquez!’” as they were jumping up and down waving their hands. They told him, “Kunan mo kami, please show this on television so that the people back home know we’re okay.” “That really struck me. This is what this job is all about,” Mike shares. 

He has as a souvenir six pieces of solid jagged iron bits, no one piece the same. “Up to that point I was for the war. When I saw that, I said I am not for this nor any war.”

5. On dangerous coverage, does he ever feel afraid? “Yeah! We’re human.”

He says what gets him through it is adrenaline rush: “When that starts, you’re just so focused on what you need to do.” He recalls the raid they had just covered and says aside from finding shabu paraphernalia, they also found bullets, which meant guns were somewhere in the area and someone could’ve fired anytime. He shares that even presidents, who are supposed to be the most secure people on earth, have had assassination attempts. I ask, “Pag oras mo, oras mo?” He says yes. “At the end of the day, there’s work that needs to be done, there’s a mission that needs to be accomplished.”

His favorite cities in the world include New York (“It’s alive!”), Hong Kong, San Francisco, Barcelona, Florence (“for the ambience, culture, and food”) and locally, privacy is of utmost importance to him so he likes going to Cebu and Palawan.

6. He admits to having cried after a coverage. But in private. “I would be wary of a journalist who doesn’t know how to be hurt by the news that he covers.”

He says that yes, he brings the baggage home sometimes, but silently. “This talk about journalists having to have steel characters, that’s true, but at the end of the day we’re all part of the human family,” he shares.

He recalls one specific moment that made him cry. It was during the 2000 Payatas landslide where hundreds of people got buried in the mud and trash due to heavy rains. He saw a 12-year-old girl and he asked where her family was. She said that her mother, two sisters, and brothers were buried somewhere, while pointing to a mound of garbage. He asked where they lived and she said that it was gone, it had collapsed. Then she said, “Tulungan niyo po akong hanapin sila, birthday ko po ngayon.”

“How can that not hit you?” Mike asks. When he reached home, he let it out. “How can things like this happen? But they do.” Of all the issues, he says that it is poverty and children that affect him the most, but he says he never lets his emotions affect his job: “I have no right to inflict my emotions on the viewers or listeners.”

7. He badly wanted to become a priest in his younger years. He tried twice, but his parents did not allow him.

He was an altar boy and would hear Mass at 5:30 a.m. (“Rain or shine”) in Sta. Ana every day, and would go straight to the early morning Mass in the La Salle Greenhills chapel. He asked for permission as he was entering high school but was denied, and asked again when he was entering college but was denied again. “I closeted myself in the room for two or three weeks and I refused to talk to anyone,” he recalls. He says his dream to become a priest arose because the Franciscans made a huge impact on his life while growing up.

8. His wife Baby is his staunchest critic, but it took her time before she got used to Mike’s taxing schedule. “There would be times when I would come home late in the evening and she would be seated in the room with tears in her eyes, waiting up for me.”

“In this kind of profession, or vocation, if your spouse is not supportive, it will be more difficult than it already is by nature,” Mike shares. He was 22, a college student, working part-time at a radio station when he met Baby. They were together for five years before they got married, and are now 35 years married. “I was her first and only boyfriend, will ni Lord,” he jokes. Today, it is Baby who reminds him of important announcements he needs to make and comments on his work. 

They did try to have a child, but after some time, they accepted it was not meant to be. They thought of adopting, but it was at a time they were both building their careers (Baby was a banker), and it just did not happen. Their baby is their dog Booma, who was a gift to Baby, and who Mike says is “too spoiled.”

9. He loves music (Bruno Mars at that), books (“none of the heavy philosophy stuff”), and traveling (“my wife and I love to travel together”).

He always has his iPod with him wherever he goes, and his playlist includes everything from Tchaikovsky to the Beatles to Christian songs. He reads books during weekends, in the car, or when traveling, and he is currently finishing Tom Clancy’s Acts of Valor. His favorite cities in the world include New York (“Its alive!”), Hong Kong, San Francisco, Barcelona, Florence (“for the ambience, culture, and food”) and locally, privacy is of utmost importance to him so he likes going to Cebu and Palawan.

Green blooded: With the nature of his work, Mike has to keep fit. Here he joins a La Salle run as he is a die-hard Lasallian.

10. He believes that almost all politicians will answer and talk well, and it’s up to the listeners to listen well and judge whether what they say is true or not.

He finds it tough to answer which of his interviews was the most memorable, but he names the “Ikaw Na Ba?” series he did on Saksi Sa Dobol B (also celebrating its first anniversary on TV) where he invited all of the 2010 presidentiables to be interviewed live as his riskiest but most interesting encounters to date. When asked to comment on some political figures, he shares:

P-Noy: “He’s a glib talker, very spontaneous.”

Erap: “He’s fun!”

Binay: “Halatang Mayor at heart. Ask me about Lim, halatang pulis at heart. I’ve raided several joints with him and I’ve had to restrain him.”

CGMA: “You have to watch her moods when you’re interviewing her.”

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At the start of our interview, intimidated by his fresh-from-a-raid story, I wanted to start him off on a good mood so I asked him if radio is still his first love. “Yes,” he said, and his face instantly lit up. “Love — you can call it passion, you can say radio is my life.” Throughout the interview, he kept pointing out how he does not call it “work”; that for him, it is a profession, an advocacy, a vocation. He shares that one of the books he is enjoying reading now is How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free by Ernie Zenilski. What makes it so different from other books on retiring? It doesn’t talk about finances and quantities, he says, “If you’re into something good that is your passion, don’t stop! Just keep doing it! The hell with all these definitions of retirement.” At the age of 60, having spent over 70 percent of his life as a broadcaster, Sir Mike still talks about his work with so much gusto. He is living proof of one of my favorite quotes, saying “if you have your passion as your profession, you won’t have to work a day in your life.”

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E-mail me at askiamsuperbianca@yahoo.com or follow me on Twitter @iamsuperbianca.