Dad We Love: Gabe Mercado

15 Sep 2011

Gabe Mercado shares his busy but fulfilling life as a businessman, performer, solo parent and adoptive father to son Beeto.

This funny man’s face and one-liner ("OK ka ba tyan?") from a TV commercial elicits high recall from people. He has graced both the big and small screens for endorsements and guestings and holds regular shows with his theater improv group SPIT. Who wouldn’t know, or at least recognize, Gabe Mercado?� �

But public as he may be, very little is known about his life as a solo parent to his adopted child, 7-year-old Beeto. Beeto was a blessing that Gabe and his family welcomed with open arms, although he admits that he never thought he would eventually be adopting. Thankfully, “there was absolutely no resistance anywhere, since we were particularly well-placed. I grew up with an adopted sister and I have a nephew who is also adopted. My mother once edited a book on adoption stories, and my father was even the president of the Adoptive Families Foundation ... so we knew what that lifestyle was all about, we knew the ins and outs of it, that's why when the opportunity came, there was no hesitation. We were all very familiar with it.”

To the unknowing observer, it would seem that the same blood courses through Gabe’s and Beeto’s veins since Beeto exhibits a personality that is unmistakably like Gabe’s, and Gabe’s sense of humor is also a shared trait. “He gets the naughtiness from me. Thankfully it’s not destructive naughtiness, which I sort of tended to, a little bit, when I was young. It’s never hurtful naughtiness, which I tended to when I was younger,” jokes Gabe.

On being an adoptive parent
“Beeto was offered to us when he was two months old by the DSWD of the NCR, [initially] under the Foster Care program,” relates Gabe. “The preference of DSWD and all these agencies is that if there is a choice for the child to grow up with a family instead of an institution, they would prefer it that way because it helps these kids should they be adopted further along the line. It becomes much easier for them to adjust to a life with a family. And that’s how Beeto came into my life.”

“Fortunately there is a path in place so that should you really fall in love with a child, you can opt to adopt him. That is the path that I chose to take, so I was prepared for that. What I wasn’t prepared for was the separation from my wife, round about the time Beeto was more than a year-and-a-half years old.” It was a mutual decision between him and his ex-wife that Gabe would be the primary parent, but “the psychological effect of being alone, and doing the journey alone - that was the tough part.”

Thankfully, Gabe shares that the DSWD-NCR is very supportive to adoptive parents. It also helps that they have regular meet-ups with other adoptive parents. “We talk about many things,” says Gabe. “We used to meet about twice a year but we do it more often now, and we help each other tell our adoption stories to the kids.”