After his marriage to Loiva, Teddy continued his quest to become a wealthy man. It was a year after the wedding, in 1978, that he learned that the accumulation of assets is not always a smooth ride. For when you win something, there is almost invariably someone else who loses out. People can become angry and resentful. For Teddy, it was a near-fatal lesson.
Colourfully worded Baguio court documents outline what happened on 6 July 1978. At 8 am, Loiva was inside a house occupied by the Gonzales family, at 12 Legarda Road. Loiva was doing some paperwork for the taxi business that Teddy and Freddie were operating at the time.
Next door, at 14 Legarda Road, lived Peter Ng and his family. The Gonzales family had recently purchased the house the Ngs were renting.
Peter Ng states he was walking along Legarda Road with four men when Freddie Gonzales called out to him. He alleges Freddie crossed the street towards him, demanding Ng immediately pay outstanding rent on the house. According to the colourfully worded court papers:
Freddie Gonzales informed Peter Ng that he had bought the house from the former owners, but Peter Ng countered that he would not pay because he did not receive any notice from the former owners. There was an exchange of words as they both hurled derogatory remarks against each other. As they were thus arguing, Teddy Gonzales, the brother of the accused, emerged from their house in a bellicose mood and went near them. After further heated altercation, Teddy Gonzales hit Peter Ng near the left eye. An exchange of blows followed. In the scuffle, Teddy Gonzales was wounded on his chest and fell to the ground, hence Freddie Gonzales chased Peter Ng as the latter ran towards their house. As he [Ng] was trying to open their gate, Freddie Gonzales caught up with him and the two exchanged blows. William Gonzales, the father of the Gonzales brothers, also came out of their house, and hit Peter Ng with a dustpan.
Freddie Gonzales maintained it was Ng who had started the fight with Teddy and that Freddie merely watched the initial incident, only fighting Ng after Ng hit him first. According to the court papers:
In the midst of their argument, Peter Ng challenged Teddy Gonzales to a fistfight. Peter Ng suddenly hit Teddy Gonzales. Provoked, Teddy Gonzales removed his eyeglasses and hit back. The two exchanged blows and grappled . . . Freddie Gonzales saw his brother Teddy Gonzales fall to the ground bleeding on his chest.
Loiva had emerged from the house and saw her husband prostrate on the ground, bleeding from a ‘gaping wound’ in his chest. He also had injuries to his right arm, abdomen and ear. She rushed him to Baguio’s Notre Dame de Lourdes Hospital for treatment.
The court acquitted Freddie of assault, causing ‘slight physical injuries’. Meanwhile, Ng was initially charged with ‘frustrated homicide’, but the charge was reduced to a lesser one of causing physical injuries.
To this day, Ng, who is a hotel owner in the Philippines, holds a grudge against the Gonzales family. He remembers wanting to buy the property he was renting next door to the Gonzales, and says he was surprised and disappointed when he was told the property had been sold out from under him.
‘We wanted to buy it. I asked him [the previous landlord] how much, if we can afford to buy, but the previous owner said they were not going to sell it,’ he says.
Ng, who had rented the house for ten years, remembers having to move because of the bitterness between him and the Gonzales family after Teddy’s stabbing. ‘They feel that they are better than other people, that’s my impression, because by then they have the money, they can buy lots of things.’
Ng maintains he acted in self-defence against the Gonzales brothers and their father. ‘I have [sic] a small knife so I stabbed Teddy many times. I have to protect myself,’ he says.
Teddy recovered and continued his law studies, travelling with Loiva in 1979 to Manila, where he undertook a six-month review to take the bar test, which enabled him to practise as a lawyer. He officially passed the bar exams in 1980. Later, he would return to Baguio Colleges Foundation to lecture in law.
THE NEW LAWYER and his wife did not waste much time before starting a family. Towards the end of 1979, Loiva fell pregnant with her first child.
Freddie Gonzales remembers that Teddy and Loiva had carefully worked out the number of children they would have, as Teddy wanted to make sure he could provide for them both financially and emotionally.
‘Obviously they just planned two, a typical American family,’ says Freddie. ‘Teddy took responsibility of fatherhood very seriously, perhaps this is why he only had two. [Teddy believed] that it’s very hard to be responsible for the future of people . . . you cannot guarantee their happiness.’
Sef Gonzales entered the world after a difficult labour on 16 September, 1980. He was born at the Notre Dame de Lourdes Hospital and weighed five pounds, thirteen ounces. Loiva was aged 22, Teddy 26. Aside from the fact this was Loiva’s first child, the labour was complicated by Loiva’s sickness. She had suffered vomiting and nausea during the entire pregnancy, and was throwing up as she went through labour. Her doctor had prescribed medication to quell the sickness early on in the pregnancy. Loiva worried it would harm her unborn baby, but the doctor had assured her it was safe.
Teddy was an extremely proud father. Having a boy as a first child was exceptionally good fortune for someone of his Chinese heritage. ‘I will name him Sef,’ Teddy declared, but did not explain where he had got the name. He planned for the secret of the name to be a gift to his son on Sef’s 21st birthday.
Sef as an infant was a real cutie, with his father’s dimples. One day, Teddy took an impromptu photo of his son, fresh from a bath and dressed only in a nappy. The Gonzales sent it in to a baby photograph competition, run by a baby care product manufacturing company. It didn’t win, but the point was how proud they were of their little boy.
For Teddy, having a child was an inspiration to work even harder, to become more industrious. Around this time, he set up a real estate agency at Legarda Road. He named it Telov Realty, a combination of his and his wife’s names. Freddie says the agency really took off, as the economy was good. Together Teddy and Loiva would also set up a video shop and a pharmacy. They would often prevail on Emily to help out by working at these two businesses.
On 9 July 1983, Loiva gave birth to a second child, a girl. The couple named her Clodine.
Teddy and Loiva raised their children in the typical Filipino way, in which children are taught discipline at an early age. From the start, they were strict parents. Loiva would give her children an allotted time to play with their toys — of course, not as much time as they would have liked — before she made them pack the toys away.
When Sef was particularly naughty — cursing at his mother or striking Clodine — and Teddy found out, he would strap Sef with a belt, says Annie Gonzales-Tesoro.
Emily saw Teddy strike Sef once, when he was going through the ‘terrible twos’. Teddy had had a long day at work and arrived home tired and tense. Emily had visited Loiva for lunch and Sef was throwing screaming tantrums. ‘Sef has been very naughty today,’ Loiva told Teddy as soon as he got in the door. From infant Clodine’s room upstairs, Emily saw Teddy wrap a belt buckle around his fist and strap Sef twice. Sef was curled up on the ground, his body forming a little semicircular shape. He was crying in Tagalog that he didn’t want the strap any more.
Emily felt sorry for Sef, and told her father Simeon, who had a chat with Loiva. He advised her that she should not dump her problems with the children on Teddy when he’d had a long day at work. Emily never saw Sef being strapped again.
Annie Gonzales-Tesoro says Sef was strapped only for serious instances of disrespect. From the point of view of Filipinos, this discipline was not classified as abuse, as it may be nowadays in the United States or Australia, Annie explains. ‘He [Sef ] was not a battered child.’
However, a lawyer friend of Teddy’s in Sydney, Bernado David, tells a different story. He says a mutual friend, a real estate agent, invited Teddy and his family to his Jervis Bay holiday home, on the New South Wales South Coast, some time in 1998.
The real estate agent later told David that his son and Sef had gone to the beach together without asking Teddy’s permission, provoking Teddy’s rage. ‘When the boy [Sef ] came back [from the beach] he was beaten black and blue by Teddy,’ says David.
According to David, the real estate agent could hear Sef being bashed against a wall in another room. The real estate agent complained to David that Teddy had violated the laws of hospitality, beating his son when he was a guest in the agent’s home.
IN THE EARLY 1980s, Teddy and Loiva built a house in Crystal Cave, near Baguio, moving from Legarda Road. Teddy’s parents lived in a house at the back of the Legarda Road property which Teddy had built them. Later he also built some apartments on the land.
Meanwhile Teddy became a Rotarian and developed a close circle of friends.
‘He was very active in the community, that’s what got him into government,’ says Freddie.
Teddy’s stint in government began in 1986. According to Freddie, Teddy worked as secretary to the Mayor of Baguio City. He was then poached to work as assistant to the Minister of Agriculture and Food, Ramon Mitra, who later ran unsuccessfully for President of the Philippines. Then in October 1987 Teddy was appointed to the President’s Committee on Ethics and Accountability, again at the Agriculture Department.
Freddie says Teddy was just too honest for politics. He was a go-getter, but he was also an intellectual and had a strong moral code. He could not abide the system of politics he came across while working for the anti-graft section of a government department. There is some suggestion Teddy was offered a bribe during this period as an anti-corruption campaigner, and that he received death threats as a result of his refusal to take it.
Freddie remembers advising Teddy that politics was not necessarily about morals. He told Teddy he was either in, or he was out. Teddy, deciding he couldn’t change the system, quit government for good. ‘He was too idealistic, there was no room for him in government,’ says Freddie.
In 1988, Teddy took a break with his family, travelling to Australia for Expo ’88. Loiva in particular really enjoyed Australia, especially Sydney. Loiva’s mother Amelita had moved to Australia with her children Edmund and Liza in 1987 and Emily had joined them later in the year. Loiva’s other brother Joseph had arrived not long afterwards.
Amelita suggested it would be wonderful if Teddy and Loiva moved to Australia too. They could all be together.
However, Teddy had many ties to Baguio. And he had an ambition to be a hotelier. He poured his accumulated wealth into building a new hotel on the site of the house once occupied by Peter Ng.
The hotel was a modern, light-coloured concrete construction, four storeys high, with around 40 rooms. It had a restaurant and music lounge to cater for the Filipino passion for music. Teddy named it the Queen Victoria Hotel, after Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building, which the couple had admired during their Australian visit. When it opened in late 1989, Teddy was extremely proud. This was what he had worked so hard for. But his happiness wasn’t to last.