JULIAN Chees, a miner’s son who grew up polishing shoes and carrying players’ bags in golf clubs in Lepanto Mines, Mankayan, Benguet, sent P20,000 to an ailing miner.
Chees, now based in Germany as a leading instructor of the Japan Karate Association, sent half of the money to 36-year-old miner Romeo Garcia, who is facing medical and financial woes.
The other half of the amount was given to the mother of 12-year old Evan Mike Bogsit who is undergoing expensive twice-a-week hemodialysis for life due kidney failure.
“I grew up in Lepanto where I shined shoes and dragged golf club bags taller than me and can easily relate with this miner whose suffering is beyond they ordinary,” Chees said last week when he sent the support amount through foundation secretary Renate Doth and this writer.
Earlier, Chees, a former world champion in kata, the formal exercise of traditional karate, sent an initial P10,000 after learning of the series of tests besetting Garcia’s family.
Earlier this year, Garcia lost his wife Jane (nee Lamlamag) to kidney failure after she failed to undergo dialysis due to fund lack.
Jane was buried in her hometown of Bauko, Mt. Province. She left behind seven-year-old daughter Princess Arcia who is undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia and four-year-old daughter Cathy Sy who is stricken with epilepsy.
She left behind husband Romeo who, a few weeks after her death, was also diagnosed with end-stage renal failure and is now undergoing twice a week hemodialysis.
Dialysis patient Bogsit, on the other hand, is a vegetable farmer’s son whose father was forced to bring the family of five children to La Trinidad, Benguet to be closer to where the kid is undergoing twice-a-week treatment.
People out there who want to take the queue from Julian may contact Romeo through cellphone number 09101116578 and Evan through his sister’s number at (0910)267-0269. (Ramon Dacawi)