Three weeks after losing her house to a pre-Christmas fire, Chin-Chin Gutierrez faced the far greater loss of the death of her mother Cecilia.
In a text message to PEP (Philippine Entertainment Portal), Chin-Chin's manager Angela Ureta said that Mrs. Gutierrez died of cardiac arrest before midnight of Friday, January 22. She was 64. She left behind daughter Chin-Chin and son Marlowe who is in the United States.
According to a QTV-11 noontime flash report on Saturday, Mrs. Gutierrez died at the Medical City hospital in Pasig, where she and Chin-Chin were rushed after fire destroyed their house last December 20.
Angela Ureta, who has been Chin-Chin's manager for the past three years, had narrated to Philippine Star (January 1) how the actress-environmentalist sustained injuries while saving her mother from the fire that razed the Gutierrez house in Loyola Heights, Quezon City. She said Chin-Chin was concerned that the heat from the fire might cause the oxygen tanks in her mother's room to explode. In her rush, she jumped over the banisters of the second floor, where her room was, to get to her bedridden mother sleeping on the ground floor. Chin-Chin crushed her left heel and hurt her lower back from the fall.
The older Gutierrez had been suffering from diabetes, as well as lung and kidney ailments. Bedridden for the past two years, she had two oxygen tanks in her bedroom.
Mrs. Gutierrez's remains lie in state at Arlington Memorial Chapels at Araneta Avenue, Quezon City.