To commemorate Sun Star Pampanga’s 30th anniversary, I’d like to deviate slightly from the usual tone of my memories with the paper. From the police beat to business reporting, I’d like to reflect on my emotional evolution that has quietly reshaped my lens as a journalist.
I started my journalism career in Angeles City with a camera slung over one shoulder and my trusty Domke F-3X on the other. Back then, I was assigned to the police beat. I was also sent to cover court hearings, especially if these were highly controversial and sensational, such as the infamous kidnap-murder case of Chevalier School student JJ Tanhueco, among others.
Covering stories like arson, murder, or even suicide demanded nerves of steel—and a strong stomach, especially when I was inside the morgue or at the crime scene. The sharp, pungent smell of formaldehyde or the sickening smell of blood mingled with other body fluids was not for the faint hearted. To this day, I still cannot imagine how I overcame the stench of decomposing flesh. It was, perhaps, one of my most difficult experiences.
I photographed the aftermath of tragedy with the detachment required by the job. And I was fine. Or so I thought.
One of the nocturnal habits of the late Fyodor “Ody” Fabian was to hang around police stations. It was around midnight when a bystander barged into the station to report a shooting incident in front of Tops Pizza in Balibago.
Ody and I were just some 250 meters away from the crime scene, so it didn’t take long for me to get there and take photos of what looked like the La Pietà by Michelangelo. The man was covered in blood. His girlfriend frantically begged for help.
I tagged along when the man was rushed to the ER of AUF Medical Center. I stood at a distance as I watched the medical team try, but fail, to save him. Out of respect for the gravity of the moment, I chose not to take photos at the ER.
I opened my eyes and struggled to make sense of my surroundings; the room was dimly lit, and my “bed” felt wet and cold. As I tried to get up, a “doctor” appeared from nowhere, stopped me, and insisted that I lie still. Confused, I tried to get up again, but the doctor held me down and said, “There’s no need to move. You’re already dead.”
Terror filled my very core. But I managed to sit on the “bed,” which, apparently, was a mortuary table. The sight of the cold slab of stainless steel terrified me even more, and when I tried to jump off, large swabs of cotton started oozing out of the stitches that ran from my stomach to my chest. I kept pushing them back inside my stomach until, at last, I woke up for real.
Waking up on my actual bed this time, I found myself wincing in pain; it was as if someone had punched me in the gut. The trauma I witnessed at the ER manifested into a bangungot.
A quick check online shows that bangungot “is a Filipino term for sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome (SUNDS), which often affects young men and is associated with a frightening dream-like state of sleep paralysis.”
When covering blood and gore, I didn’t flinch. I had my camera. I had a job to do. The camera was my shield. Like Dan Eldon, the Reuters photojournalist whose story was narrated by his sister, Amy, in the documentary Dying to Tell the Story, I understood how the lens could create distance. It gave both purpose and protection.
When my work shifted to business reporting—first at Central Luzon BusinessWeek, and then at Gulf Times in Doha, Qatar—the pace changed. The stories were less visceral.
Sun Star Clark and Sun Star Pampanga gave me my start. I learned how to chase stories, meet deadlines, and navigate the ethical terrain of community journalism. But they also gave me something I didn’t expect: a lifetime of memories that continue to shape me, even now.
Thirty years on, I’m no longer the young reporter who could walk through a crime scene without blinking. I’m someone who looks away—and then looks within. And maybe that’s the real story.
