Cabbie talk

BENCHWARMER
Ramon Dacawi

Monday morning, I asked an officemate to ring my cell phone. It is, or was a cheap Samsung model a pickpocket would hardly find interest in, except perhaps to hurl back at for being without class. A programmed voice from Globe responded: could not be reached or out of coverage area. It validated my fear that whoever found the unit inside a taxi had decided to keep it and so removed the card. .

It was the nth unit I had misplaced, in a recurring act of forgetfulness that’s always hazardous to a provincial newsman’s wallet. Still, I cling to the hope, however remote, that the finder would read this and mail back the old SIM card. “You’re so kind to have been giving away your cell phones……without your knowledge and consent,” Conrad Marzan used to remind me.

A few hours before the black unit slipped out of my pocket – or hands – and into a taxi’s floor or backseat, Conrad’s daughter, Soliel, texted a Father’s Day greeting. I had stood at her wedding, and she later made Conrad a grandfather. Baby Wolfgang’s birth ten months back multiplied Conrad’s yearning to be back from California with wife and nurse Pilar and son Nicolas. Now that Conrad’s here, I got back at him with this caution from experience: Grandchildren don’t get spoiled but they can spoil grandparents.

I guess Art Pasag, the honest cabbie of 13 years back is now a grandpa sharing Conrad’s sentiments over grandfatherhood. While I lost track of how many cell phones I’d lost, I can’t forget how Conrad met Art. The memory flashed back, quite vividly, while I was aboard Cris de Vera’s taxi on the way to work Monday.

Two previous cabs had passed me by, perhaps unaware of my signal to board. Calling me “tang”, Crisreadily motioned me in, to his Kia Pride. He swore having no passenger preference, but would readily pick a mother with a baby in her arms over any other passenger. Or, I guess, an old man.

Cris almost fumed narrating how a fellow cabbie beside SM Mall ordered an old woman with grocery bags to get out when she asked to be delivered to La Trinidad where the route’s constricted by re-concreting otherwise passable pavement. .

Cris is in the mold of Art Pasag and, I guess, many other Baguio cabbies still unaffected by the rip-off style of those road sharks in Metro-Manila. In May, 1997, Art and his wife returned a woman’s bag containing a hefty sum while he was working double time to save the life of his son.

The bag belonged to Tomasa Marzan, Conrad’s mother,a retired public elementary school teacher. She had withdrawn P20,000 from a bank for the enrollment of her grandchildren, then forgot her bag after alighting from Art’s cab at the city post office.

Another passenger who boarded noticed the bag and told Art about it. He agreed when Art asked if he could drive back to the post office.The two could not find Mrs. Marzan. Art drove home and asked his wife to open the bag for the owner’s identity and address.

To celebrate Art’s honesty at a time he needed money most, Conrad mounted a concert that raised P27,000, bulk of which came from then regional police director, now retired Chief Supt. Rogelio Aguana. The amount was turned over to Pasag, for the surgery of his son Victor, then 22. The boy was born with a heart defect and badly needed surgery.

Then Tourism Secretary Vicente Carlos called up then regional tourism director Lita Mondiguing, asking her to find Art and his son and bring them down to Manila.“The whole country is proud of you,” Carlos told Art when they met at the secretary’s office the following morning. Carlos then said he had arranged Victor’s surgery at the Philippine Heart Center and for the boy’s family to stay for free in a hotel behind the center until he was ready to come home.

Later, in September, Art was invited to Malacanang to receive the “Taxi Driver of the Year” plum from then President Ramos, under the annual tourism “Kalakbay” awards. The award consisted of a trophy, a suit for the occasion, P10,000 cash, an all-expenses-paid week-long holiday abroad and P10,000 pocket money.

In my rush to get home, I once rode a cab along Session Rd. Upon reaching my place, I held out a bill to the driver, but he wouldn’t have it. I turned and saw it was Art, smiling. After that, I made it a point to see it wasn’t Art on the wheel before flagging down a cab. Once, he spotted me walking down the main street’s sidewalk and drove slowly abreast, motioning me to hop in until he lost me in the pedestrian crowd.

One morning, after Art’s story came out, radio host Chris Bartolo called up. He said a lot of cabbies had been coursing through DZWT items left in their taxis: baby shoes, umbrellas, grocery items, documents and whatever. Art had since retired and, I presume, enjoying grandfatherhood. I’m looking forward to riding Cris de Vera’s cab again. It’s that Kia Pride with plate number AYK 739.

Meanwhile, whoever found my Samsung cell phone might want to just leave its card to the cashier at Luisa’s Café along our main street. I badly need the SIM that contains contact numbers of indigent patients and Samaritans. (e-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments).