Charice on the cover of FILIPINAS Magazine/ December 2009. FILIPINAS Magazine is a monthly magazine that caters to the Filipino American community. The magazine’s inception was in 1992 and has become a nationally-distributed magazine that serves Filipinos in the United States. It covers many aspects of the Filipino diaspora, particularly on Philippine heroes, leaders and achievers, culture, history, travel, food and entertainment.

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The Nightingale Sings

The kindness of strangers. This is how the 16-year old singing phenomenon Charice Pempengco explains her meteoric rise to stardom. It was a stranger who uploaded videos of her singing on YouTube. Those videos caught the attention of Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey—both strangers to her—and before she knew it, she was on her way to the U.S. to appear on their shows. The rest, as they say, is history.

Charice’s guest appearances on both shows opened doors for her, paving the way for music legends David Foster, Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion to take the petite Filipina under their wings. With such pedigreed support, stardom came quickly, so quickly that Charice (who now uses only her first name) admits that she still gets goosebumps whenever she thinks about how it happened.

Born and raised in San Pedro, Laguna, by a single mother, Charice got her big break when in 2007, one of her fans named FalseVoice (real name Dave Duenas) posted on YouTube without her knowledge, her renditions in “Little Big Star,” a TV talent show in Manila, of “I Will Always Love You” (by Whitney Houston) and “And I’m Telling You, I’m Not Going” (from “Dreamgirls”).

The videos garnered at least 13 million hits from Internet users worldwide. Sweden was the first to take notice, when the Stockholm-based music publishing company, Ten Songs/Productions, offered Charice her first recording contract. The first major TV network response came from South Korea when Seoul’s local TV talent show “Star King” invited Charice to appear. The U.K. followed suit in spring 2008 when London’s celebrated TV host Paul O’Grady asked Charice to guest in one of his shows.

As her Internet audience quickly grew at a staggering pace, Charice-mania also hit the U.S. with her guest appearances in the Ellen and Oprah shows. On Oprah’s prodding, the 15-time Grammy-winning music producer David Foster agreed to sign Cha-rice to his recording production 143/ Reprise Records. “Who could resist the Little O?” Foster jokes every time he appears with Charice on the TV talk show circuit.

In the spring of 2008, Foster invited Charice to perform on his “David Foster and Friends” show at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, alongside such big-name stars as world-famous Italian tenor, Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, among others. Charice’s performance at Foster’s tribute concert became her debut performance on the international concert stage. She got two standing ovations (the show was broadcast on PBS).

The following summer, Charice performed a song with Bocelli titled “The Prayer” in his hometown of Tuscany, Italy. That fall, she performed a duet, “Because You Loved Me,” with Celine Dion at her Madison Square Garden show in New York City. Charice’s performance got rave reviews in the New York Post and the New York Times.

Her first internationally released single “Note to God,” written by Grammy awardee Diane Warren and produced by David Foster, became an instant Top 10 hit on iTunes.

“I don’t know if fate has designed it so. But my own Cinderella story is wrapped around the lesson my mother, Raquel kept repeating to me since I was little: that it is through our own generosity as neighbors that others are helped, and when given a chance to do an act of kindness, no matter how insignificant, one should take that chance because kindness brings happiness and good fortune to others,” Charice relates. “I took that lesson to heart.”

Charity Work
True to her word, Charice visited Miami, Florida last October 16 to help raise funds for the Miami Children’s Hospital (MCH).

“I’m happy and humbled to be a part of the MCH Foundation’s efforts to raise money to ensure that all children have access to the best care available in the nation,” she declared. “What makes this undertaking more significant for me is its timing of giving me the chance to stand true to and put into deeds the spirit of my just recently released first international single “Note to God.” She then went on to purr the lyrics: “…wish for wisdom to let compassion rule this world, …put some tenderness in our hearts, …and find love cuz love is overdue.” “You know what, my song has become part of my prayer every night before I go to bed,” she relates.

Founded in 1950, MCH is a 289-bed freestanding state-of-the-art facility re-nowned for its excellence in all aspects of pediatric medicine. With a medical staff of more than 650 physicians and over 2,000 employees, MCH offers more than 40 pediatric specialties and subspecialties. Its pediatric teaching and residency program is the largest in the Southeastern U.S. MCH has at least 50 Filipino nurses on its payroll.

Three of MCH’s specialty-programs— cardiology/cardiovascular surgery, neonatology and neurology/neurosurgery—are ranked among the best in the world, according to a survey conducted by the U.S. News & World Report.

It was in MCH that the world’s first non-surgical tricuspid heart valve replacement, endoscopic ventricular thrombectomy, and extracardiac Fontan operation that did not require cardiopulmonary bypass, were performed in separate operations.

The Comprehensive Epilepsy Center of MCH’s Brain Institute is world-renowned in treating medically resistant epileptic seizures. Take the case of Melanie Lawrence of Leesburg, Georgia. She was only three years old when she began having relentless seizures as many as forty times a day. Melanie was brought to MCH where its team of neuro-surgeons succeeded in identifying the mysterious source of Melanie’s seizures through the use of SPECT scans, a technology that few facilities employ. A surgery on her was performed in which a significant portion of her malfunctioning right frontal lobe was re-moved. Little Melanie, now 5, is a bright, confident kindergartner who loves to read.

Children are especially close to Charice’s heart. When she started earning money, she began to sponsor the education of seven children through World Vision Philippines. She also supports Bantay Bata (Child Watch), a nonprofit that provides social services to disadvantaged and at-risk children, one of which is the setting up of the national emergency hotline, ‘163,’ which allows people to call in and report incidences of child abuse, exploitation and neglect.

“I lost a little brother to heart disease; he lived only for five days,” relates Charice. “That was a very depressing time for our family and it took my mother time to recover from the sadness of losing him.”

She continues: “Children are helpless. They need to be taken cared of. So when I got a call from the MCH Foundation to perform at their ball and concert to benefit their patients, it didn’t take me a second to decide and accept the invitation. My little brother’s death always gives me that sense of wanting to help children who are helpless like him.”

For all that she has accomplished in the music world at a very young age, Charice is an inspiration to millions of Filipinos who left the Philippines and their families to work abroad. She’s proud to identify herself as one of them.

“Make no mistake, I’m no different from our OFWs (overseas Filipino workers). They left the Philippines to sell to foreign employers their skills, know-how, and talents. I left the country for exactly the same reason which is to sell to people the gift that God so kindly endowed me—my voice,” Charice asserts.

Her audience of MCH benefactors, which included Miami celebrities such as Gabrielle Union, Coach Pat Riley, Alonzo Mourning, and Dwayne Wade, were so mesmerized with her stunning performance at the historic 1920s-built Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida—the perennial venue of the annual summits of the heads of states of Central, North and South Americas and the Caribbean.

She left her heart, however, in the wards of MCH where kids—some almost her age—are battling serious ailments.

“I want to let the kids at the hospital know that wherever I go, I will always share with them one other lifeline, more important that anything else—my prayers. I’m sure to include them in my prayers every night before I go to bed. We all must not forget that God is always the best doctor and the best medicine.”

Author’s credit: Nick Vicera writes from Miami, Florida.

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