“Make up your mind. Do you want to be a lawyer or a baker?”
For the 20-something-year-old Delia Tantuico, it was not a question of which profession to pursue, but which to pursue first. She could understand her eldest brother’s annoyance, however. Himself a lawyer, he could see that the youngest among his siblings, who appropriated a nook in his office, seemed preoccupied with whipped cream and spatulas.
“My brother had a law office at that time in Tacloban,” said the Leyte-born Vice Dean of the UA&P School of Law and Governance (SLG). “I had taken the Bar, but the results had not yet been released. I would go to his office, but sometimes I would not because I love baking cakes. It came to a point where I would receive orders of cake from people or friends. Sometimes I would not go to the law office because I had so many orders,” she narrated, her trademark laugh irrepressibly contagious.
She did not disappoint him, though, he who told her to take chemistry instead of law. She passed the Bar and worked nonstop. The baker’s apron was temporarily hung.
From one province to another
Atty. Delia has worked in both public and private sectors. She started out as a legal researcher in the then Senate of the Philippines (before it became Batasan under the new constitution) before moving to an investment bank. She also became a liaison officer to the governor of Leyte while holding post in an all-female law office. When martial law broke out, she moved to the US, where she worked for 16 years with Nestlé. When she decided to come home, she became registrar of UA&P.
The shifts from one workplace to another did not bother her. At a young age, she learned how to adapt to changes for many reasons. For one, her family would move from one province to another every three years because of his father’s work at the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). As a consequence, Atty. Delia speaks Waray, Cebuano, and Ilonggo.
Second, she was toughened to a certain extent by being the only girl surrounded by three older brothers. The boys would always gang up on her.
“When I was small, they would manage to make me cry. It was more of an affectionate jest,” Atty. Delia recalled with fondness.
Third, she has always been competitive. As a young girl, when her mother asked her to play the piano for a friend who had a piano-playing daughter, she did not agree till she heard the daughter play and was assured she was better at it.
This trait she carried as she moved from one administrative position to the next, always outdoing herself in the process: from University Registrar to Admissions Director to Chair of then School of Economics/School of Management Operations Committee to Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and now to Secretary of the newly established Institute of Law under SLG (concurrent with her assignment as vice dean).
Service and integrity
Unlike other people who flitted from one workplace to another for financial reasons or for prestige, Atty. Delia did it to be of more service. The administrative position was vacant. She was needed, willing, and available. Thus, she served.
That is why she received the news of her winning the Search for the Dragons Inside with composure and equanimity.
True, she was very happy about it. In fact, she excused herself for a day from her annual out-of-town seminar and faced the terrible traffic going down from Tagaytay just to attend the awarding ceremony. But for her, she did nothing extraordinary at all.
“That is why I love the way that one (the certificate) is worded—greatness in the ordinary. I said, ‘This really says it all.’ When I think about it, I did not do anything spectacular. I just do what I have to do and do it well. It is having a mindset rooted in being of service and making oneself available. Like [if someone asks], ‘Can I consult you, Miss?’, [I say] ‘Yes, of course.’”
She takes particular delight in entertaining legal questions from the gardeners, janitors, and security personnel. She sees those occasions as her way of helping out as best she can.
“They are not serious problems…(only) legal doubts and minor matters. They just do not know what to do. I am amused but at the same time happy to be able to help.”
Her way of dealing with co-workers brings to her mind her father’s own treatment of his staff. He would regularly invite one or two of his subordinates to have lunch at home to talk with them and improve their rapport. Her father’s integrity is an ethic she wants to emulate.
“I remember when I was in high school. We had no transportation of our own. We just took public transport. One time, he was assigned in Pampanga. I found out that his subordinates had cars. I asked, ‘Why is it that you’re the chief of the office but you don’t have a car?’ That sense of integrity and that sense of service I took from my father.”
Coffee and cakes and pastries
At present, Atty. Delia is also doing what she has always wanted to do: teach. She teaches law-related courses in five schools in UA&P and wishes that more students would benefit from the education the University offers.
“One of the things that I worked hard for was the scholarships, especially the financial scholarships. Our fees are not that cheap, and there may be many who would want to come but cannot because of that. I would like to think that if we had more scholarships to spend for really poor but deserving students, especially those in the provinces, that may be a good help.”
Perhaps when she is done wearing her many caps, she would be able to wear her apron again. With her retirement just around the corner, that possibility is making Atty. Delia excited.
“At some point in time, when I retire (in Apitong, Tacloban City), my dream is to have a small coffee shop. There will be coffee and cakes and pastries I will bake. The senior [citizens], the retired people, can spend their time there. I will have books if they want to read, and I will be playing classical music. That is my dream. People tell me, ‘Yeah. When your coffee shop opens, I will go there.’”
Atty. Delia, make sure the floor area is ample. We will all go.
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