You had a good run, Ricky Lo!
Your life’s work put you in the shadow of celebrities and movie stars, trailing them, chatting with them eyeball to eyeball, trying to catch them on a slip-up, drinking and dining with them, angling to pry a secret out of them. In the end, hours after your departure, you had become as big a star as the brightest of them, for you were their idol!
Ricky was a health freak. How could a 75-year-old who didn’t look a day older than 60 (or 55) be taken from us so suddenly? Not necessarily a picky eater, he never gained a pound, careful with what he ate and how much. He walked as much and as far as he could, if he was alone and certainly when he was in the mood for soul food at Mr. Ube’s restaurant, the Mezzanine, on Ongpin street. Chinatown was the place for quick satisfying meals but also for exotica like dikkiam and hopia. What the natives knew about Chinese healers and medicines Ricky also knew.