Fallen SAF man ‘never bragged about being cop’

Police Officer 2 Glenn Bedua was one of the 44 members of the police Special Action Force (SAF) killed in Jan. 25 in what was reported as a “misencounter” between Moro rebels and SAF teams who were out to arrest two high-level terrorists in Mamasapano, Maguindanao province.

In the outpouring of public sympathy and rage that followed, the SAF casualties were hailed largely for their sacrifices in the battlefield.

But in the private grief of their families, Bedua and his fallen comrades are being remembered best not for their short-lived combat careers but for what they did when not in uniform.

“He’s just a simple and quiet person. He never bragged about being a policeman,” Bedua’s widow, Adelisa, told the Inquirer at St. Peter’s Chapels in Quezon City on Thursday. The bodies of seven slain SAF men, out of the 42 flown to the capital earlier that day, were brought to St. Peter’s for postmortem services after the arrival honors held at Villamor Air Base.

He was a “loving father,” who would always play with (our son) Glenden at home whenever he was on a break, “even when he’s still tired from work. He did that so I could also take a rest,” said the 32-year-old housewife.

The couple first met in Zamboanga on Christmas Day of 2010, about a year after Bedua was assigned there. They were married in December 2012 and have since been living in Zamboanga, where Glenden was born 10 months ago.

“All he wanted was to serve the country and protect the people but his life was taken too soon,” Adelisa said in between sobs. “Now I don’t know that to do.”

Before her husband was killed in Sunday’s operation, he told her that they would “just arrest someone.”

“When he didn’t come home, I knew something bad had happened,” she said. It was through a news report on TV that she confirmed her husband’s death.

Also waiting for Bedua’s body at St. Peters’ was his aunt Myrna, who remembered him as “a loving nephew who served as a role model for his cousins.”

When Supertyphoon “Yolanda” hit Leyte in November 2013, Bedua acted like Santa Claus well ahead of Christmas and brought relief goods to his affected relatives in the central Visayan province, Myrna recalled.

Bedua rushed to his relatives both from his mother’s and father’s sides in his hometown Dulag to check if everyone was OK, and brought along canned goods, among other things they needed after the calamity, she added.

Today, Bedua is expected to make his final homecoming trip to Dulag, where the family is burying him, according to Myrna.