It swept across the floor and penetrated the walls. It seeped into the atmosphere, permeating the air with an energy both powerful and rare. And, sure enough, nearly everyone inhaled deeply, breathing it in until they became irrevocably infected.
Then they stood up to dance, laugh, and sing.
“It means so very much,” Raquel Montes said of the almost magical explosion of joy in building number two. “It’s something we all look forward to.”
She’s the administrator of Vista Montana Senior Living, a residential center in the tiny Southern California desert community of Hemet where many elderly people live out their twilight years. Once the center employed a Filipino caregiver named Rhiza Romero Chick. These days she comes back only monthly to serenade those she once looked after but now cares for in whole new ways.
“I love old people,” says Chick, 48. “I love singing with them. It’s my passion.”
But not her only one. Since arriving in America 17 years ago, Chick has made a name for herself singing, dancing, and joking her way into the hearts of sold-out audiences throughout Southern California. Especially among the region’s large community of Filipino immigrants.
“Everyone sings, laughs, and feels contented,” enthused one longtime fan. “She’s always so entertaining. It’s amazing!”
In fact, for two years running—2024 and 2025—Chick has held the title of Singer/Performer/and Stand-Up Comedienne Diva of the Year proffered by the AmerAsia International Awards, an annual event affording all the glitter, glamor, and prestige of the Hollywood Oscars.
All this despite a cancer scare that took her out of the running for more than a year. “It’s been an honor,” Rhiza gently allows regarding her recovery and subsequent comeback.
And, indeed, her life hasn’t always been filled with sparkle.
Born under modest circumstances in Maasin, Southern Leyte, Chick spent part of her childhood in Daanbantayan, a municipality at the northern tip of Cebu Island, where she followed the family tradition of becoming an elementary school teacher in Cebu City.
Her father loved singing (“He kept pushing me to do karaoke,” she says) and her brother adored telling jokes. So Rhiza began doing the same, entertaining students with laughter and music. Then another opportunity arose, bringing her a step closer to the world of entertainment she now inhabits.
A firm called International Pharmaceutical Inc. (IPI) needed a choreographer. One of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors in the Philippines, the company sponsors frequent new product launches nationwide. So for four years, the future songstress and funny girl of Los Angeles worked with a team of dancers orchestrating those rollout shows. Eventually her talents even extended to Cebu’s annual Sinulog Festival, for which Rhiza became a choreographer.
Then came the event that changed her life forever: Rhiza’s best girlfriend found her a best boyfriend. Hanging out at the internet cafe next door, the helpful matchmaker signed onto a dating site called Filipinaheart.com and, without Rhiza’s knowledge or consent, hooked her up with a California-based foreigner interested in meeting Filipinas.
“She kept saying ‘talk to him, talk to him,’” Rhiza recalls, “but I was scared. I didn’t think I could [communicate] in English.”
Eventually, she did. For a while, she and Garret spoke every morning before work. Then he came to Cebu to meet her family. And the rest, as they say, is history; Rhiza emigrated to the US on a fiancé visa in 2008, got married in a19-minute Las Vegas ceremony, and settled in Ontario, California. The next year she gave birth to a daughter—Kaylani, now 15—and, two years after that, bought a house with her husband in Hemet.
And so it all began.
Those early years, she says, were tough. Her only family in America was a sister in faraway Georgia. And living in the desert wasn’t exactly conducive to breaking speed limits in the fast lane. So Rhiza did the best she could. She made friends with other Filipinos. Opened her home to parties for wayward immigrants in need of song, sentiment, and succor. And, through one of them, even began choreographing the local version of Sinulog.
She also started working full time as a caregiver. And that’s how the much romanticized and usually mythical “big break” finally came her way. Frequently entertaining muscle-sore coworkers at home, Rhiza gained a reputation as a first-rate masseuse. So one day the owner of My Haus, a popular Filipino bakery and restaurant in nearby Murietta Hot Springs, called to ask for a favor. Would she, he wanted to know, mind massaging Arnel Pineda, the famous lead vocalist of the Filipino band, Journey, who was in town for a concert?
“He actually trusted me to do it,” Rhiza still recalls with wonder.
The massage went off without a hitch. Except that, somewhere near its middle, a manager suddenly appeared and asked her to sing for Pineda’s pleasure. “I think he was joking,” Rhiza now maintains. Nonetheless, she sang a popular song called “Friend of Mine,” and the results were immediate and twofold. First, Pineda invited her to appear with him at an upcoming concert, which soon led to another performance with Erik Santos. And second, My Haus restaurant hired her for a regular weekend singing and comedy gig.
It was there, in fact, that my Filipino wife, Ivy, and I first saw Rhiza perform a few years later. “She was an excellent singer, hilarious, and connected well with all the guests,” Ivy remembers. “She made everyone laugh. It was a treat for all of us who were there; she made sure everyone had fun.”
The main thing I remember about the experience is that the place was packed with Filipinos and the entire show was in Tagalog. Not a word of which I understood. That’s less true these days, Rhiza says, now that more and more of her Filipino fans come accompanied by their English-speaking mates.
Aside from sheer entertainment, though, Rhiza Chick has also proven herself to be a good friend to compatriots in need. Sandy Craig, 39, emigrated to California from Siargao Island back in 2016. “When I first came here,” she recalls, “I felt all alone.”
Then she met Rhiza through a mutual friend and, voila! her universe changed overnight. “I got invited to a Christmas party at her house,” Sandy remembers, “and, oh my God, it felt like I was home!” Not only was there singing, dancing, laughing, and comradery, she says, but fellow Filipinos wanting to be her friend!
The deal got sealed months later when Sandy failed her behind-the-wheel test for a California driver’s license. Rhiza offered to help. So, on the morning of Sandy’s second try, the two women met early in Hemet where the singer/comedienne sat next to the new wannabe driver in her car offering pointers on how to do it right. Then Rhiza accompanied her to the Department of Motor Vehicles to inspire confidence and make sure everything went well.
It did.
“She helped me and expected nothing in return,” recalls Sandy, who got her license. “She didn’t even know me but wanted to help. Now she’s like a sister, just like family.”
Unbeknownst to either of them, however, dark clouds were slowly gathering on the horizon.
In 2022, not long after Ivy and I caught her act, Rhiza felt a lump in her shoulder. “I thought it would be gone in a month,” she says now, “but after a month it was still there.”
So she went in for a mammogram, and the news was not good: stage two breast cancer on the right side. It would be 18 months before she performed again.
The chemotherapy, meanwhile, made her sick and bald. “It was bad,” she remembers. “I was up and down. I lost all my hair. All my friends were there taking care of me, worried that I would die.”
Throughout the ordeal, Rhiza posted frequent photos and updates, inspiring friends and fans with her courage, optimism, and resolve. “I cried when she got sick,” Sandy Craig recalls. “It was all so sad.”
Then, miraculously, the cancer went into remission. And Craig, along with more than 100 others, attended Rhiza’s survivor’s party in her Hemet backyard featuring music, dance, and lechon. Not to mention, of course, lots of singing and joking by their now-chipper-looking recovering paragon.
Rhiza has been cancer-free for three years now, and her career is back in full swing. She performs regularly—sometimes with a partner named Stella—to standing-room-only crowds in Hollywood, Los Angeles, San Diego, Murrieta Hot Springs, Hemet, Moreno Valley, Lake Elsinore, Fullerton, and soon, Las Vegas. And she still spends her days working as a caregiver for a firm called In-Home Support Services based in Riverside County.
Which brings us to that recent memorable day at Hemet’s Vista Montana Senior Living center. Singing such oldies as “Sad Movies (Make me Cry),” “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” “Hey Jude,” and “Yellow Submarine,” Rhiza drew whispers, giggles, shouts, and sighs from her elderly listeners. Circling among them more than once, she drew people to their feet amid the clapping, stomping, whistling, humming, and melodic waves of joy. Until several stood with her up front, performing in tune.
One of them, it turns out, was famous. Virgil Gibson, once the legendary lead singer for The Platters and, before that, the world-renowned Rivingtons, had been living at the Hemet senior center only about a month when Rhiza Chick showed up. Now 80 and bent with a cane, he hardly resembled the energetic young man who sang with The Drifters, The Coasters, and Bobby Day, touring the world including the Philippines where he claims to have several grandchildren.
But as Gibson’s clear voice rang out in a sweet rendition of “Only You,” his most famous song, there was nothing old about him or it. “I think this was wonderful,” he said later, describing the gathering of swaying seniors in the desolate desert. “I love watching people come together, getting to know each other. You got no one hating or talking negative; people just need to converse.”
Beaming nearby sat Rhiza Romero Chick, the dazzling diva who makes it all happen.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist, author, and Manila Times columnist with homes in Northern Mindanao and Southern California, where he is spending the summer. His latest book, Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise, is available on Amazon. This story appeared originally in the Times Sunday Magazine.
