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For the past 17 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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This website includes selected articles from this week's edition of the Filipino Express. Not all the stories published in the printed version appear on this site.
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NEW YORK CITY --- All throughout her stay in the United States, Gloria Canonizado dreamed of becoming a US citizen. Now in her deathbed and dying of breast cancer in a Bronx hospital, the 59-year old domestic worker finally realized her lifetime dream.
On Monday, July 25, New York Congressman Charles Rangel presented Canonizado with a special congressional certificate giving her honorary citizenship status.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. A million thank you’s to all of you for helping me. I am so very grateful,” Canonizado, who was too weak to speak, wrote in a note to Rangel and the staff of Calvary Hospital.
Canonizado, who is from Metro Manila, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1976. She was transferred to Calvary Hospital on June 8 from an acute care facility where she was treated for severe shortness of breath. Canonizado’s cancer has spread to her lungs, making 24-hour oxygen a necessity.
Still, there was one thing that was always on Canonizado’s mind while she was at Calvary Hospital: her July 16 appointment with the the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly INS).
The family that she worked for as a housekeeper sponsored her for US citizenship but her fingerprints were rejected by the USCIS and had to be redone.
Chris Bentley, a spokesman for the USCIS, said fingerprinting problems are not uncommon for domestic workers, who use abrasive cleaners “that can literally wear your fingerprints off your fingers.”
Luckily for Canonizado, Calvary Hospital has a policy of granting patients’ request, such as for certain kind of ethnic cuisine or personal item for their rooms.
“My patients, at the end of their lives, will set a goal to see something before they leave this earth -- a bar mitzvah, a christening, a wedding,” said Dr. Michael Brescia, medical director of Calvary Hospital, which only treats patienst with advanced cancer.
In Canonizado’s case, her wish is to keep her July 16 appointment with the immigration office, which was not an easy request.
“When Gloria’s patient care team brought her request to me, I knew that this was something we had to make happen. We didn’t initially think that it would be difficult. We hoped that Immigration would be flexible given the circumstances,” said Dr. Brescia. “But this wasn’t the case. Still, we knew this was something we had to do.”
Dr. Brescia asked Calvary Hospital director of family care Debbie Feldman to make Canonizado’s wish a reality. Feldman met with Canonizado’s care team to discuss whether, given Canonizado’s physical condition, they could.
The care team initially felt that they could have Canonizado’s appointment conducted at the hospital. Canonizado’s physician, Dr. Margret Squillace, called USCIS to ask, but was told that this wasn’t possible. She then explained that Canonizado would need to be transported there in an ambulance, would arrive on a stretcher, and would need to remain on the stretcher during her appointment. When she asked if they could make special accommodations for this, she was again told that this wasn’t possible.
As a result, Canonizado’s social worker, Laurel Kinney, accompanied her to USCIS to serve as her advocate and make sure that she was treated with respect and that necessary care was taken for her condition.
A senior news anchor at NBC, Gabe Pressman, learned about Canonizado’s plight and visited Calvary Hospital to speak to her and to feature her story on his nightly news segment. Pressman was so touched by Canonizado’s story that he contacted the Department of Homeland Security to see if they could expedite her citizenship, but was told that the process could take up to five years.
Pressman then contacted Congressman Charles Rangel to see if he could help expedite Canonizado’s citizenship. Like Pressman, Rangel was touched by Canonizado’s story. On Monday, July 25, he visited Calvary Hospital and made Canonizado’s wish of becoming a US citizen a reality. Rangle presented Canonizado with a special congressional certificate that bestowed her honorary citizenship status.
“We’re just all very grateful that with the help of Gabe Pressman and Congressman Rangel we were able to do this for Gloria,” said Dr. Brescia. “It was a truly touching event.”
Canonizado is unmarried and childless. She has four sister still living in the Philippines.
Her only family in New York is her sister Remedios, who lives in Jamaica, Queens and who has provided Gloria with constant care.
As a nanny and housekeeper, Canonizado used to send her earnings to her family in the Philippines.
Interviewed days before she got her honorary US citizenship, Canonizado said America meant a lot to her.”I love America. It’s a life of opportunity,” she said.
“When my approval comes through, oh my God, I’m gonna jump, jump, jump for joy,” Canonizado said.
But when it came on Monday, she was too weak to even say a word. But there was no mistaking that unbounded joy was jumping out all over her frail body.
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Los Angeles, CALIFORNIA --- Movie star Nora Aunor will go on trial for felony drug possession charges after a Los Angeles court found probable cause that she may have been carrying methamphetamine when she was arrested nearly four months ago.
Aunor, Nora Cabaltera Villamayor in real life, was held over for arraignment and trial when a judge at a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles ruled that there was probable cause to proceed with the case.
Aunor was arrested March 30 when airport screeners stopped her on her way to Oakland.
The 53-year-old popular film and music star looked poised and composed when Judge Paula Adele Maybrey set her arraignment in Superior Court on Aug. 8 where she is expected to enter a not guilty plea. She is free on $10,000 bail.
Outside court, Aunor told reporters: “Itís very difficult. What is the word? Trauma.”
Her lawyer, Claire Espina, said she would raise the matter of police testimony during the hearing that appeared to indicate Aunor was not read her rights before her interrogation.
“In the evidence that was presented, we found two significant things -- she was interrogated (by police) without the benefit of a Miranda warning and she requested a Tagalog interpreter and was not provided with one,” Espina said.
Espina said the police lapses in questioning Aunor could render whatever statements her client may have made inadmissible in court.
Aunor, known as “The Superstar” to her fans, has been charged with having 7.7 grams of methamphetamine and a glass pipe in her carry-on bag when was arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport on her way back to her San Francisco bay area home after a business trip. She has denied the charges.
Espina said the judge’s ruling was not unexpected because at a preliminary hearing all the prosecution had to do was to present some evidence that a crime had been committed, and evidence that the defendant committed the crime.
There is no standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said.
Asked if she was optimistic about winning the case for her client, Espina said “it’s a defensible case and it’s proceeding on the lines of how we expected it to proceed.”
Espina contends Aunor only has a sixth grade education and it was important for her to have a Tagalog interpreter present to make sure she understood any legal proceedings.
She indicated she would file a motion to suppress statements Aunor may have made after her belongings were searched by airport police who also allegedly questioned her in violation of her constitutional rights because they did not read her the Miranda doctrine. (MNS)
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NEW YORK --- The fake doctor charged with killing a Filipina bank executive after botching a laser tongue operation was indicted on a second-degree murder charge on Monday, July 25.
Dean Faiello, 45, displayed no emotion as he was given the news. His lawyer said he’d plead not guilty when he returns to court Sept. 7.
The indictment charges Faiello with depraved indifference to human life in the death of Filipina Maria Pilar Cruz, 35, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said in a statement.
Cruz, 35, a financial analyst at Barclay’s Capital, had gone to Faiello for laser treatments of a growth on her tongue. Her body was found Feb. 18, 2004, under a concrete slab at Faiello’s former home in Newark, N.J., 10 months after she vanished.
Faiello had been arrested in October 2002 for practicing medicine without a license, but he continued to see patients after that arrest, prosecutors said.
He fled to Central America after pleading guilty in June 2003 to the unlicensed practice of medicine charge, which carries a possible four years in prison. He was extradited from Costa Rica in May.
If convicted of second-degree murder, Faiello faces 25 years to life in prison.
Faiello, who is being held without bond, will be arraigned on the indictment Sept. 7.
Prosecutors believe Faiello killed Maria Cruz, 35, of West 50th St., in a botched laser surgery two years ago at his unlicensed Skin Ovations center on West 16th Street.
The New York Post reported that Cruz had been undergoing surgeries by Faiello for treatment of a benign growth on her tongue — in all likelihood unaware that her “doctor” had no license and was a longtime user of cocaine and the nasal opiate Stahdol.
Prosecutors charge that Faiello recklessly failed to get Cruz emergency medical aid when she began convulsing under anesthesia.
He then stashed her body in a suitcase and sealed her in concrete in his mansion in Newark’s tony Forest Hills section, they charge.
Then he fled to Costa Rica, where authorities said he lived “the life of a gay party boy” for more than a year, according to the New York Post report.
Faiello’s neighbor, Mark Ritchley, with whom Faiello lived for five months after Cruz’s disappearance, found Cruz’s purse and ID and told investigators he suspected Faiello stored the suitcase with Cruz’s remains in Ritchey’s garage.
After graduating at the top of her class at Maryknoll College in Quezon City, Cruz, known as ‘Pipay’ to her family and friends, moved to the United States in 1992 to work in Houston, Texas. She earned her MBA degree in finance at Fordham University in 1998 and became a US citizen four years later.
From a low-level position at Citibank, she worked her way up to become a financial analyst at Barclay Capital asset management group, earning as much as $180,000 per year.
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