Correspondent Christine Estrella
LAST December I covered a Christmas party hosted by a city official for street children outside City Hall.
While kids were played the parlor game “The boat is sinking”, I noticed a boy standing behind the crowd, holding sampaguita leis hung from a PVC pipe.
CDN ISSUE December 23, 2013
I approached the boy named Loyloy. He said he wasn’t joining the games because he had to sell his remaining flower necklaces.
For an 11 year old, he was short for his age and could not speak well. I bought one of his leis, hoping the P5 price would help him.
Loyloy’s smile as he handed me the string of sampaguita buds left me wishing he would turn out to be more than just the subject of a Christmas feature I was assigned to write. The story was published with his photo on Dec. 23.
The day after Christmas, I received an e-mail from a Cebuano priest in the US. He said he wanted to grant Loyloy’s wish for a bicycle and to provide for the boy’s education after reading that Loyloy had dropped out of school and dreamed of resuming his studies.
The next month, the priest’s nephew and I looked for Loyloy all over the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño but he was nowhere to be found. We had sketchy details
of his home address. Despite the road blocks set up for the Sinulog, we pushed on with our search.
By sheer luck, we spotted Loyloy on the road with a cousin just as they were about to board a jeepney for the afternoon’s peddling.
I will always remember the way his eyes lit up when we told him about the help coming his way.
My Christmas wish for someone to hear his story was granted, but most importantly Loyloy’s.