My Crossed Paths with the Mayor of Colma
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Colma Council Member Joanne del Rosario is sworn in by the author, her college classmate.
I do recall that she was among the girls – most of us had just turned 16 – who defined “ladylike,” with their long shiny straight hair, makeup, polished fingernails, heels, and an aura of gentility, unlike us who kept our eyebrows unplucked, tried but failed to tame our naturally curly hair with a flatiron, the one that smoothens wrinkles on the green and white uniforms we rarely wore, and had not shed our boys’ shoes.
Joanne and her group should have been on the cover of magazines or on fashion show ramps, and boys surely agreed. Fancy wheels would roll into the lanai or the school veranda facing the driveway, with dashing drivers from the schools across the creek, further down the avenue, or farther in the still-developing suburbs or the big city downtowns.
Neither she nor I were deeply immersed in campus activities when our peers in other schools were passionately studying or vociferously blasting the government. While I found a platform for my slow political awakening in a column in our school paper and went on a march to Plaza Miranda where students from every college descended to decry signs of imminent military rule, my eye was focused on social “issues” in the lifestyle section rather than on the life-changing front page of dailies.
Martial Law came down in our sophomore year. Faced with unknowns, we lost our childhood. I worried for my father, who held no punches against the self-declared president-for-life in his column in the newspaper that was the first to be shut down by the regime. I remember the stillness that September morning I woke up to greet Dad. “Marcos declared martial law,” he said in that voice reserved for sermons when he felt my grades did not meet his expectation.
I’m sure Joanne was as stunned as I was by the development. Having been born in New York, she had the option to flee to a free society in the US, where three siblings lived, I know now. She chose to stay with her parents and continued studies at our college that was in the midst of Filipinization from its American beginnings.
By junior year, my clique had expanded to underclass-mates who shared my propensity for fun and daring on or off-campus. Lord knows how we made it to graduation, having habitually skipped class and broken rules, like smoking where we pleased – for which I apologized recently to our Dean of Women.
I couldn’t imagine Joanne engaging in rebellious acts. She had left school, started working, married, and moved to Maryland with her now-ex before coming to California where her only son, Reggie, was born. I learned all this when our paths crossed again in the 1980s in South San Francisco, where I had resumed my journalism in Philippine News.
Her call pleasantly surprised me, having had no recollection of a single conversation with her back in the day. I was thrilled to have a classmate nearby, happy to help get a story published about her acquaintance who was seeking justice. And that’s the Joanne I came to know and with whom I bonded.
She was starting over: acquired certification as a legal secretary, met her new love and now-husband, Rene Malimban, started work at a biotech firm, and joined an association of Filipino American residents of the quiet little town where they relocated.
Fate chose her to be in Colma when two of its Council members came under investigation. Admirers who saw her as an ideal representative of Filipino skills and savvy persuaded her to file for candidacy the following election. Most Colma residents concurred and re-affirmed their choice in a recount requested by the disgraced former mayor who ultimately lost the race.
My turn came to reach out to her for a story no one – not even Joanne - realized: She had become the first Fil-Am woman elected to govern a town in San Mateo County and, soon after, the first Fil-Am woman in all nine counties in the San Francisco Bay Area to own the title of Mayor. (Ruth Uy Asmundson was voted Mayor by the City Council Davis in Yolo County beyond the Bay Area.) I took profound pride in her accomplishment and hoped it would inspire more Fil-Am women to enter public service or seek elected office. Joanne correctly took my offer as an affirmation. She responded by opening up and sharing about her life. We became confidantes and allies.
Women are supposed to be competitive, but we proved that belief a fallacy by becoming collaborators.
When I’d ask her to weigh in on community issues for a story, she trusted that I would not misquote her.
Classmates reunite with fellow Californian Maryknollers after 45 years.
When she found out about the all-volunteer nonprofit I had formed to educate about domestic violence, she disclosed her experience as a survivor of intimate partner violence. She joined our nonprofit as survivor speaker, empowering people in abusive relationships by showing them how they can find healing and thrive just as she has. She has recruited her contacts to become partners supporting our education movement for healthy relationships.
Author (left) and council member (right) advocate education to prevent abuse with ALLICE Kumares.
I was honored when she asked me to swear her in for her fifth term as Council Member. Unexpectedly she made it her turn to give affirmation, a very public one by introducing me as her “classmate…mentor and adviser” at the Council Chambers.
Today del Rosario is one of two most senior leaders of Colma, second only to Helen Fisicaro, who has served 28 years. Between 2006 when she was first elected and Dec. 13, 2022 when she was sworn in as Colma Mayor for the fifth time by her husband minutes after she took her oath as reelected Council Member, Del Rosario has transformed into a tested town leader, a political force, and a Filipino American icon.
Confidantes celebrate sisterhood and collaborate for Fil-Am empowerment.
Lately, the grandmother to Ryden has been zipping across the Bay to babysit. A second grandchild will be arriving next year, another blessing on Joanne’s milestone year. The year 2023 will be full, with her growing family, mayorship, and advocacy. Moreover, Joanne del Rosario may just spring a surprise with a new role suited to her productive life in public service.
First published in Philippine News Today. Reposted with the author’s permission.
Cherie M. Querol Moreno is Executive Editor of Philippine News Today, Founder-Executive Director of ALLICE, a Commissioner with the San Mateo County Commission on Aging, and a Program Manager with Peninsula Family Service transportation program.
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