What do 2024 Paris Olympian Carlos Yulo and veteran award-winning actress Hilda Koronel have in common aside from being in the limelight?
Carlos and Hilda, Susan Reid in real life, grew up in the thickly populated if not squalid Leveriza district in the vicinity of the Rizal Memorial Stadium in Malate.
Would this toughness in life—the meanness of Caloy in his pronouncements after he won two gold medals in the Olympics about her mother spending his money and the frankness of Susan—be the sources of where they are coming from?
Hilda, before she was discovered by Lea Productions, was a pretty lass in the neighborhood who took her high school education at the Manuel Luis Quezon University in Quiapo, Manila.
Does Carlos Yulo’s straightforwardness come from his social background in a tough neighborhood?
Because I was running around with now National Artist for Film Lino Brocka and his former personal manager, the still missing Boy C. de Guia (a famous TV host, entertainment journalist, star builder, and talent manager), they revealed that Koronel is a daughter of a poor woman from the tough community and an American serviceman in Clark Air Base in Angeles City, Pampanga.
According to Lino and Kuya (a term of endearment to an elder man or brother by blood or by affinity) Boy, Hilda’s mom dabbled in the laundry as a source of livelihood.
It was Brocka who took care of Hilda as an actress while de Guia was the handler.
Meanwhile, many years later, according to one of OpinYon’s Editors Diego Cagahastian, Carlos was born to the Yulo family of Angelica Poquiz Yulo and Mark Andrew Yulo in the same neighborhood as Hilda.
No wonder, both Hilda and Caloy are street-smart and down-to-earth.
I’ve known Susan for the longest time and I could say she is a very frank, open and honest person about a lot of things.
It was Lino and Kuya Boy who connected me to her and even if it was only a skin-deep familiarity it suffices a lot of wonderful truths about the actress.
Meanwhile, Caloy became interested in gymnastics because his house was just a stone’s throw from the sports hub of the Rizal Memorial.
He was fond of tumbling which was noticed by, according to Wikipedia, his grandfather Rodrigo Frisco so the old man brought him to the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines (GAP) which is just housed inside the coliseum.
#WeTakeAStand #OpinYon #CarlosYulo #HildaKoronel