After surviving a fire and losing her beloved mother, actress Chin Chin Gutierrez has borne her suffering with remarkable grace and optimism

“Close your eyes. Then count to three—and imagine that when you open them, everything is gone. Everything.”

That, says her manager Anjie Ureta, pretty much describes the feeling that Chin Chin Gutierrez had around Christmas time last year, when her family home was razed by a fire. The fire, which struck in the wee hours of December 20, ate up everything, including the actress' personal belongings, family photographs and valuable documents, even the vehicles parked in the garage.

The only things they managed to save were the clothes on their backs, which had to be cut away in the emergency room hours after the fire so their injuries could be treated.

Thus, when asked for photos of Chin Chin and her mother to run with this article, Anjie said, apologetically: “I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can give you. Naubos lahat.”

But Chin Chin, the eternal optimist, prefers to look at her glass now as being half-full rather than empty. Although she lost practically everything—including her mother, who died several days after the fire—Chin Chin has maintained a demeanor that is beyond calm. In fact, the day after she was released from the hospital, she went back to work, taping her scenes for Maging Sino Ka Man. She had bandages on her fingers to hide the burns, which also explains why the clothes that her character has been wearing on the show are mostly long-sleeved blouses, or shawls that she can draw over her arms to cover whatever scars are left. Fortunately, her role is that of a rich donya, so the clothing requirements still come off as believable.

Chin Chin has always been a very spiritual person, and this has helped keep her from sinking into a pit of despair and self-pity. People have remarked on how beautiful she is, and that if you look at her (and didn't know what she'd just been through), it would seem like she's not suffering at all.

She is, of course, but with all the goodness that came pouring in from people who learned about what happened to her, Chin Chin couldn't stay angry, bitter or depressed for long. People came forward with the usual mass cards and flowers, but also with donations of money, food, clothes, and makeup—things she needed for work. One person, a fellow artista (a popular actor who doesn't want his identity known), lent her a car, and told her to use it for as long as she needed. The day of this interview, Chin Chin showed up in a completely donated ensemble, from the sandals on her feet to the black handbag that was given to her by a nun. The only thing she had on that was not donated was the top, which was the only article of clothing that was not completely burned in the fire. The top (which was in a suitcase that was left in Chin Chin's car) has a hand-painted design of Our Mother of Perpetual Help on it, which reaffirms Chin Chin's belief that God was with her then, and still is.

If God wasn't with her, how else, she says, would she have woken up all of a sudden at 3am on the morning of the fire? She normally sleeps right through till morning (especially when coming from a taping), but somehow, that morning, she woke up and saw the fire on the staircase just outside her door. “I thought I was dreaming,” says Chin Chin.

After seeing the flames, she went back to bed and tried to sleep again, but somehow, someone kept nagging at her to “Get up, get up.” She did, and in the span of two or three seconds, realized that she was not imaging the fire. The sight of the flames, which were leaping higher and higher by the minute, spurred her into action. Her first thought was for her bedridden mother, who was sleeping in a bedroom on the ground floor. Prior to the fire, Chin Chin's mother, a former nun, had been in and out of the hospital for the past three years. “She would vomit blood, and her heartbeat would slow down. There was water in her lungs. Her physical body was deteriorating slowly, but her spirit was changeless, untouchable. I guess that, in a way, all this prepared me for what happened that morning,” she says.

Faced by the sight of flames outside her bedroom door that morning, there wasn't much choice. The fire struck at 3am; by 3:30, Chin Chin and her mother were on their way to Medical City .

In those 30 minutes, Chin Chin did things she never thought she could do. “In life, you can always wait and take your time. But when there's fire in front of you, there's only one thing you can do,” she says.

She could not go down the stairs, because fire “was blocking the staircase.” If she went through the fire, she would have been badly scarred by the flames. There was only one thing left to do: She climbed the banister (which at that point was the only part of the stairway that had not been reached by the fire) and jumped to the first floor below, a drop of about seven or eight feet. From there, she ran to her mother's bedroom, which was about two meters away.

She yelled at the two housemaids who were sleeping in her mother's room. “Sunog! Bumangon kayo, kumuha kayo ng timba!” Her mother was sleeping on a hospital bed that could be wheeled out; the problem was that they could not wheel the bed out the front door because of the flames. The nearest exit was the door leading to the porch. So the normally peaceful Chin Chin assumed a different personality. She had to, because she knew that their survival in the next few minutes depended on her. “I had to be louder and more authoritative to get them moving.” Her mother was bedridden and had difficulty speaking because of her illness. She was attached to an oxygen tank (she slept with the tank to ease breathing at night), and if the flames reached the tank, it would explode. They had to get out of there as fast as they could. Chin Chin sustained burns on her fingers from grabbing at whatever blocked their path, like pieces of furniture.

Finally, they made it to the garden. Then it was on to the hospital. Chin Chin's mother was in shock. There were burns on her fingers, water in her lungs and a big sore on her back. “Water was seeping out through the pores of her skin,” recalls Chin Chin.

On their way to the hospital, Chin Chin alternated between praying and talking to her mother. At the hospital, her mother went into cardiac arrest. The hospital staff revived her once. According to Anjie, Chin Chin's mother was lucid “till the end.” At one point, she nodded to Chin Chin, who whispered, “Mama, you'll never be alone. Go, go into the light.”

Chin Chin remembers those last moments. “Her eyes moved up. They were transfixing, but she was giving me the cue that she was moving on to another plane, another dimension. I saw tears rolling down her face.”

A priest came in to administer the last rites. At this point, Chin Chin called her father, a 74-year-old botanist who lived in California . While her father was saying his last words to her mother, Chin Chin broke down. She could no longer hold back her tears. “The dams opened wide” is how she describes what happened.

“Dad, tell her everything now,” Chin Chin urged her father. “Dad, tell her everything.” Her father asked: “Why, Chin? Is she passing?” Chin Chin replied, “I don't know, but her heart is weak.”

Chin Chin's father spoke into the phone: “Hon! Hon! Are you alright? I'm there, praying for your journey. You'll always be my sweetheart. I'm returning you now to your original bridegroom.” Chin Chin's mother was a former nun who left the convent after she fell ill. Within a year of leaving the convent, she met Chin Chin's father.

At 11:56, Chin Chin's mother passed on. But even now, says Chin Chin, “There is no time to look at the dark and the morbid, only the grace and fear of the Lord. I have such great peace, because I know for certain that this is God's movement.”

Her first night home alone, Chin Chin took home the huge collage of her mom and put it near the foot of her bed (she was staying with a family friend as of this writing), so that it would be the first thing she saw when she awakened. The collage, measuring about 1.5 by 1.5 meters, was made from photos of her and her mom that were—there's the word again—“donated” by friends.

So many friends have rallied around Chin Chin. Richard Merck sponsored a benefit concert. A group of Baguio-based artists also held a fundraiser. Angeli and Gary Valenciano extended help through their Shining Light Foundation. People she didn't even know came forward to help and offer whatever she needed. Miraculously, the clothes and shoes that were donated fit her perfectly.

“When she found out about all this, she just cried,” recalls Anjie. “She asked, ‘Why are they doing this for me?' There was a hint of embarrassment on her part, but Richard said, ‘She doesn't have to know everyone personally for them to understand what she went through.”

Now, Chin Chin is busy putting the pieces of her life back together, going to government offices to apply for a new police clearance, a new residence certificate, a new passport—but everything is coming together, like a beautiful mosaic.

“It's a beautiful work,” says Chin Chin. “There's one great plan unfolding, and I'm so privileged to be witness to it. It's a miracle.”