It was as if a strange new vibration had entered the room.
COVER PHOTO
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.
Filipino caregiver named Rhiza Romero Chick. COVER PHOTO FROM RHIZA ROMERO CHICK; ADDITIONAL INSIDE PHOTOS BY DAVID HALDANE
“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.”
Montes is 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. The center once 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.
A vulnerable yet inspiring image of Chick during her chemotherapy journey.
“I love old people,” declared Filipino-American 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 by 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!”
Rhiza’s husband, Garret, and teenage daugher, Kaylani, were critical to her recovery.
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.
Rhiza is 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.
“It’s been an honor,” Chick said with a gentle smile, speaking of both her recovery and subsequent comeback.
And, indeed, her life hasn’t always been filled with sparkle.
The elderly residents look forward to Rhiza’s monthly shows.
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 and kept pushing her to do karaoke, she recalled to The Sunday Times Magazine, while her brother adored telling jokes. So Chick began doing the same, entertaining students with laughter and music. But then, another opportunity arose, bringing her a step closer to the world of entertainment she now inhabits.
Caring for the elderly is a major passion.
A firm called International Pharmaceutical Inc. (IPI) needed a choreographer. As one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors in the Philippines, the company frequently sponsors new product launches across the country. 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 extended to Cebu’s annual Sinulog Festival, for which Chick became a choreographer.
Then came the event that changed her life forever: Chick’s best girlfriend found her a best boyfriend. Hanging out at an internet cafe next, the helpful matchmaker signed onto a dating site called Filipinaheart.com and, without Chick’s knowledge or consent, hooked her up with a California-based foreigner interested in meeting Filipinas.
Rhiza also choreographs and performs in Southern California’s annual Sinulog Fiesta.
“She kept saying ‘talk to him, talk to him,'” Chick recalled of her best friend. “But I was scared. I didn’t think I could [communicate] in English.”
Eventually, she did. For a while, she and best boyfriend Garret spoke every morning before work. Then, he came to Cebu to meet her family. And the rest, as they say, is history. Chick emigrated to the US on a fiancé visa in 2008, got married in a 19-minute Las Vegas ceremony, and settled in Ontario, California. The following year, she gave birth to a daughter — Kaylani, now 15 — and, two years after that, bought a house with her husband in Hemet.
Appearing with Arnel Pineda was one of Rhiza’s big breaks.
Those early years, she said, 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.
For two years running, Rhiza Chick has been awarded Singer/Performer/and Stand-Up Comedienne Diva of the Year, proffered by the AmerAsia International Awards.
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, Chick 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 Filipino lead vocalist of the American band Journey, who was in town for a concert?
“He actually trusted me to do it,” Chick still recalled with wonder.
With Erik Santos
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 averred.
Nonetheless, she sang a popular Filipino song called “Friend of Mine” by Odette Quesada, and the results were immediate and twofold. First, Pineda invited her to appear with him at an upcoming concert — which even led to another performance with Erik Santos–and secondly, My Haus restaurant hired her for a regular weekend singing and comedy gig.
It was there, in fact, that this author and my Filipino wife, Ivy, first saw Chick perform a few years later. “She was an excellent singer, hilarious, and connected well with all the guests,” Ivy remembered. “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, Chick says, now that more and more of her Filipino fans come accompanied by their English-speaking mates.
Besides 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 recalled, “I felt all alone.”
Then she met Chick through a mutual friend, and, voila! Her universe changed overnight. “I got invited to a Christmas party at her house,” Craig narrated, “and, oh my God, it felt like I was home!” Not only was there singing, dancing, laughing, and comradery, she said, but fellow Filipinos wanting to be her friend.
The deal got sealed months later when Craig failed her behind-the-wheel test for a California driver’s license. Chick offered to help. So, on the morning of Craig’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 Chick 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,” shared Sandy, who ecstatically 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 my wife and I caught her act, Chick felt a lump in her shoulder. “I thought it would be gone in a month,” she recalled, “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 shuddered. “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, Chick posted frequent photos and updates, inspiring friends and fans with her courage, optimism, and resolve.
“I cried when she got sick,” Craig said. “It was all so sad.”
Then, miraculously, the cancer went into remission. And Craig, along with more than 100 others, attended Chick’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.
Chick 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 an In-Home Support Services firm based in Riverside County.
Which brings us back 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,” Chick 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 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 made it all happen — just as she always does, with heart, humor, and a song.
