VETERAN broadcast journalist Alex Bolongaita smiled while remembering his 29-year-old daughter Marie Alexi, fondly called by her close friends as Maxi.
“She’s full of life, she’s a tough girl and she stands for things that she believed in,” Alex said.
Maxi, a thyroid cancer survivor, was robbed and killed inside her own home in Sitio Nivel Hills, Barangay Busay last Thursday dawn, a tragedy that the Bolongaita family had not expected.
“It seems like you just want to sleep and not wake up, because when you wake up, it hits you nga akong pinalanggang anak wala na (that my beloved daughter is now gone),” he said, his voice breaking.
Maxi’s mother and her brother arrived home from the United States for Maxi’s wake. Alex said Maxi was closest to her brother.
Alex said that on Sundays, he and Maxi would dine out and he would listen to her updates.
“We talked, we’re friends. She’s daddy’s little girl all the time. I’m a good listener. This is my daughter and I appreciate her thoughts on these things,” he said. Alex said he was glad that the police arrested Reynante Mendador Mambiar, 36, within hours.
“He (Mambiar) should get what he deserves,” he said.
Rowena “Wang-Wang” Capistrano, reporter and anchor of an evening program in dyRF, said that what happened to Maxi hurt her, adding that she is proud that they were close friends.
“I’m proud that we became friends. She really fought until the end. She showed to us what she said before about men and women being equal, and that women should not be taken lightly,” she said.
Maxi turned over the crown for Mr. and Ms. Press Freedom 2017 to the new winner last weekend, as she was the first runner-up in 2016 representing the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP).
“I’m so happy that I get to wear the crown even for a short while,” she was heard saying to her fellow former candidates during the event. (JOB)