The first time I saw her, she was on her way out from the winding driveway of the offices of the former Montage Studios back in Horseshoe Village. I was coming back from a meeting, and I said to Ronnie the driver then that she seemed like a nice person. I was wondering whether or not we hired her…
It turned out that Tina Cosep as a secretary was bubbly, gregarious, and simply grabbed her assignments and went straight to the finish line. Of course, she made a couple or so mistakes here and there. Unfortunately for her, she was technically under my former partner Julius (http://golangco.blogspot.com/2008/06/eulogy-for-julius-yap-chua.html) who never really cut people too much slack.
Tina was due for the hatchet.
That time, I was too busy to look for new people, and my side of the house in Montage always seemed undermanned. Tina seemed like a genuinely nice person, and I wanted to prove to my former partners that nurturing people (as opposed to whipping them like mules) can not only help improve those selfsame people, but benefit us in the long run as well… so yes, I told them to not fire Tina, and I took her in.
She did not disappoint.
As first observed, Tina was bubbly, gregarious, and when being taught, vigorously bobbed her head in acknowledgement of everything I said. Of course I knew she was listening since she probably got seven out of ten of what I said. And while she seemed to have learned a lot from me, she also learned a bit of my recklessness. But it was what it was, and it wasn’t bad at all. It was quite good actually. Good enough that I trained and turned Tina into a full-fledged account executive when I put up Maverick Advertising back in January 28, 2002.
There are a handful of people I’ve taken under my wing, who I’ve become quite proud of. Tina was one of them. Apparently, she was used to being left out in her life and fending for herself and her daughter Clarisse. After over half a dozen major soap-opera-style episodes in her life (getting knocked up early, dad had a second family, fire razed everything, etc…) I realized that while I taught Tina how to be become an advertising accounts person, she didn’t need anyone teaching her how to survive. At least I think I gave her a little room to stop from surviving and actually live for a while…
I also taught her that not everyone was out to get you. (Sometimes I think that’s a mistake…)
Tina left Maverick somewhere through 2004 (or was it ’05?). I honestly don’t remember, because when it seemed that Tina’s life was under way, she started to fade from us until she finally decided to put up a little something of her own.
A handful more soap opera-style episodes again later, I was told recently that Tina had found herself a nice, steady job in a cellular phone distributor, kept on dealing with whatever life threw her way, and still came out smiling at the end of the day.
So it was quite a shock to have been told that Tina had already been in Capitol Medical Center’s ICU for two weeks fighting for her life. Shocking because Tina shouldn’t have been in an ICU for that long, because if there was anyone who knew how to fight for her life, it was Tina.
But yesterday she lost the fight.
Cristina C. Cosep passed away last September 18, 2008 to complications from pneumonia. She left behind 3 beautiful children, friends who loved her more than family (no, that wasn’t a typo. And yes, that included me…), showed anyone who cared to pay attention that no matter what kind of shit life threw your way, you can still smile, laugh, then have yourself a nice day…
She was thirty one.
