The lifestyle dean, my mentor and dearly loved ‘Pacesetter’

It was my year gap before college, sometime in late 1994, when the phone rang. I was a few months into writing for then Manila Bulletin entertainment editor Crispina Martinez-Belen — the very lady I’m grateful to in starting me off in this beloved career — and it was a call from the newspaper.

It wasn’t Tita Cris though. It was a feisty woman’s unfamiliar voice — booming and clear as a bell — who asked, “Is this Tessa Mauricio?”