After his father was arrested, Dexter, 17, and his siblings received some help from an unexpected benefactor who came looking for him at their shanty in Mandaluyong City.—Jodee Agoncillo
Police Officer 1 Raymart Verano was part of the team who arrested a suspected drug pusher in Mandaluyong City early September.
After putting Arthur Turacan behind bars, however, Verano felt that his mission still wasn’t finished when he saw the detained widower in tears over the fate of his children.
Arthur’s wife died of leukemia years ago. In November last year, the Turacans lost their home in a fire that hit a slum area in Barangay Addition Hills.
Arthur had since lived in a shanty erected near a basketball court together with two of his three children — Dexter, 17, and DJ Mark, 16. His eldest child, Danica, who has a family of her own, moved to Quezon City after his arrest.
“Ma’am, do you know of any organization who takes care of orphaned children or those whose parents were arrested?” Verano asked when this reporter met him earlier this month. “I just want to help someone.”
After Turacan’s arrest, Verano said, he went back alone to the suspect’s makeshift home and handed some cash to Dexter, DJ and Danica so they could have a decent meal.
What he did was risky because other drug suspects in the area might recognize him and have him cornered.
“It was dangerous for me to go back there,” said Verano, a member of the Mandaluyong police intelligence unit. “But I thought I should. Nobody else would help the children.”
“Of all my arrests, this one really touched my heart. I hope somebody could help them. The father may have violated the law, but the children should not suffer this way. That’s why I wanted to help. They are just victims of poverty.”
He recalled how the three siblings cried when they first saw their father in police custody, “but they were still thankful that he’s still alive.”
Weeks after his father’s arrest, Dexter found work in a house reconstruction project in his old fire-hit neighborhood, where he’s paid only P150 for a day’s labor. But since he’s not hired regularly — he’s only needed when there’s a fresh delivery of sand to be hauled — he would pass many hours in hunger.
Spending the night in the shanty, “I would always cry thinking about my father…and what could happen to us the next morning. Will we go hungry again?” he told the Inquirer.
Dexter has visited his father only three times at Mandaluyong City jail since the arrest, on days when he had saved enough money to buy Arthur food.
“He said sorry for what happened, for being unable to do anything for us now,” the teenager said. “But he promised that this situation won’t last forever and things will get better soon.”
Dexter said he was aware that his father used and sold drugs, but didn’t realize he was already on the authorities’ watch list. “We are just happy that he did not die. I thought he would be killed like the others.”
And so it startled Dexter one day when a man showed up at the shanty, asking how he and DJ were doing. It was PO1 Verano, who came in civilian clothes.
“I was afraid at first, but then he gave us some money and fed us,” Dexter said, recalling the encounter.
Verano later sought out Turacan’s mother-in-law to relay the detained suspect’s wish for his children to sell the furniture and appliances that they had saved from the fire. This effort later raised P4,000 for the boys in the shanty.
“As policemen, being criticized by the public comes with the job,” said the officer, who declined to be photographed for this report. “But what I did was for the Lord.”