Mikee Cojuangco on love, politics & crazy horses

She was been away from the limelight for quite some time, but still very active with her advocacies and still as beautiful as ever. I catch up with a multi-talented woman who became Manila’s “it” girl even before we started using the term. Here are 10 things you should know about Mikee Cojuango-Jaworski.

1 Despite her parents Pepito and Tingting Cojuangco being in politics, Mikee’s dad actually did not want her to run for SK when she was 18.

“He said if I joined SK, I wouldn’t be as happy as I could be, that I would get stuck. I saw it myself,” she recalls. “My final straw with SK was when I offered a couple of co-SK officials a personal loan as a start-up capital for a small business. I had my Swatch money then. But I was told that if I wasn’t going to give it as a ‘donation,’ to just keep my money. So I did! I remember my dad telling me, ‘If you feel you are getting something out of it, personally, then get out. Public service is a sacrifice.’

“The first time that I realized that there was a difference between my life and other kids’ was, I don’t remember what grade I was, but one of the questions in Social Studies was, ‘Saan mas masarap ang buhay, sa probinsya o sa ciudad?’

I kept insisting ‘sa probinsya.’ The teacher kept saying that the amenities are not available in the province. But I was thinking, ‘Yes, they are!’ Ano lang naman yung amenities at that time, aircon, TV. I went home and told my parents what we talked about in school. And there was something different about the way they looked at each other and smiled. It wasn’t much later that I realized, ah, okay, I know na why, it is different,” she shares.

Mikee says that even if she grew up privileged, she wasn’t indifferent to the realities of how other Pinoys really lived. She recalls her mom always taking them on different provincial trips (“yung maliligo ka in those banyos outside the house where the toilets are”) and her dad always sat her down to talk. “My dad was always telling me, ‘You know, you are so blessed. From the time you were born and until the time you die, hopefully you’re never going to have to worry about your next meal.’ And I used to wonder, ‘What’s this about a next meal?’ I was eight when he first gave me that talk. He would say, ‘There’s nothing that you need that you don’t have, so you have to find a way to be a blessing to others because not everybody is like you.’ Up to now, same talk,” she says with a laugh.

2 Mikee is the middle child among five girls and admits, “I spent more time with my teammates than I ever did with my sisters.”

“All of us are so different. Personally, I never really felt the competition or even the comparison. Of course you’ll hear, ‘Ay, mas maganda si ganyan,’ which for us was more, ‘Ha-ha! Mas maganda daw ako!’” She says she and sisters Liaa, Pin, Mai Mai, and China were not really close growing up (“No sharing of boy stories even”), but points out, “Now we are so close.”

“My two older sisters had a lot to do with us growing up, because our parents were busy. So they called it their revenge. They were super strict! What time you have to be home, how you talk, the words you use, everything. They would say, ‘Sit up straight! Eat properly! Do your homework!’” she mimics. Meanwhile she, Mai Mai and China were “magkakampi and magkaaway.” “Usually China and I were magkakampi so we would cut the hair of Mai Mai’s Barbies or take the heads off,” she laughs. “It was my ate Liaa that encouraged me to make the Asian Games a goal, then it was my ate Pin naman who would dress me up or choose what I was gonna wear because I never owned anything to go out.”

3 As a high school student in CSA, she balanced her studies (“There was no special treatment”), training, plus she was in the student council.

“I get to the riding school, I wait for the sun, mga 5 a.m. School would start before eight. After school, there were student council meetings. Then I would just go back again after school. Basta I get home mga 8:30.” When asked if she ever felt balancing it all got too difficult, she says, “Never. Ever.”

She shares she got to enjoy school life just like any other student. “I really didn’t feel like I missed out because of my sport because my dad probably wouldn’t have let me go out anyway. I remember though one time, I was in second year high school and he grounded me. I went to the house with my classmates and asked if we could watch a movie. ‘Okay, be home by 10.’ Eh it was 7:30 p.m. I was the only one with a car. We all went to the movie house, and by 9:30 I was telling them, ‘C’mon we have to go!’ Because I was still going to drop them off. So we left without finishing the movie, of course they were so inis with me. I got home at 12 past 10. He grounded me for two months. I said sorry and I said, ‘Okay. I mean, come on, the last time I asked if I could go out was probably four months ago! So it’s not really a big deal,’” she laughs. “He didn’t ground me from training anyway.”

4 During the height of her acting career, she was being pitted against Judy Ann Santos. “I just thought, are you serious? Juday? Me versus Juday? It’s Juday!

“From the time (the Swatch commercial) aired, I was getting movie offers. It was not something I was considering because I didn’t have time. There was no way I was gonna give up school or riding, so I would just say no. Then I got injured when I was 19 and I couldn’t ride for a year. After all those years, suddenly I had free time and I didn’t know how to handle it! ‘Okay, let’s do this,’” she shares.

“I totally enjoyed everything I was doing. The lifestyle was so ideal for me because I wasn’t really a social person. I could be home three months shooting a movie and taping for my show, and gone another three months training and competing.

“What other job was gonna allow me to do that? And earn what I needed to support my sport? I always say that I never made all of these plans, but obviously God made them for me. One thing I learned from my mom is when an opportunity comes, grab it. If you don’t like it, get out of it. If you like it, buti na lang you tried.”

5 The one moment in her life that she felt most self-conscious was when she sang at the birthday special of Sonny Jaworski at the Araneta Coliseum.

“We were recording the song and I told my vocal coach, ‘No, no, no, it has to be really perfect, it has to be the best I’ve ever sung. It’s my boyfriend’s dad!’ We spent a couple of hours recording,” she recalls. Mikee stands up to reenact the moment. “I remember standing there, singing lip sync and performing, and I went to do this to my hand (reaches her hand out) and it started shaking! ‘What’s happening!?’ When I was done, I was looking around, it felt like ages standing there looking like a fool! And I just walked off the stage,” she laughs.

When asked how it was when she first met the Big J, she says, “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, he is such a nice person.’ I was at their house and we were on our way out. It was late afternoon and someone opened the gate, it was him. He opened the gate himself, got back into his car, drove it in. It was so... normal!”

She met her husband Dodot through common friends Vince Hizon and Toni Leviste who were dating at that time. “It took months for Toni to convince me. I had been set up with so many people that I felt, I’m tired na. I’d rather do other things than be set up again.” She eventually said yes to the set-up, they ended up hanging out with a group of friends, then just the two of them; then after a while, they got together. “I do remember, one time he was sick and I sent him oranges in a bayong. He always teases me that I made him ligaw, and for me, why would he think that I like him just because I sent him oranges? I would tell him, ‘What? Because of that you thought I liked you? Baduy mo!’ I didn’t want to say na lang kasi I was given a lot and baka mabulok,” she recalls. “Baka nga akala niya niligawan ko siya!” Two years after meeting each other, Dodot and Mikee got married.

6 On what kind of woman she thinks would be perfect for her cousin P-Noy: “She has to have a strong personality. Even if she’s going to pretend to be submissive, she needs to be strong.

“He is palabiro especially with me. He would ask, ‘Ano, okay ba? Kasi pag sinabi mong ayaw mo, ayoko na rin,’ he would joke around with me. I remember one time I teased him, ‘Kuya Noy, ano ba, tatlo na anak ko!’ And he said, ‘Basta pag meron na talaga, tapos yun na talaga yun, I will seek you out para ipakilala ko sa iyo.’  The girls that I’ve met that he has gone out with have not been that different from each other, they’re nice, intelligent and classy. But who wouldn’t want that? Maybe what he needs is not that,” she laughs. “Maybe he just needs time to actually go out on dates. It’s not an easy time for him to find someone.”

On reading P-Noy basher posts on social media: “Of course it affects me. I try to remind myself that out of two bashers, there are 10 lovers or likers or admirers.”

7 Dodot originally wanted him and Mikee to have 12 children.

They have three boys, Rob, 14, Raf, 12, and Renzo, 5. “In the beginning, when we got married, he was saying he wanted 12 kids. He was actually serious! Then the first was born, then you know, milk, diapers, all that. Then it became, ‘Ah, 10 na lang.’ ‘Okay, whatever,’” she laughs. “Then Raf was born. That’s double the milk and diapers. Okay, eight na lang. Tapos nag-aral na. Every time reality set in, there was a change of point of view. So naging four na lang. We were planning to have two, then have a break, then two again. But when Renzo was born, we just got so busy and all of a sudden, now he’s five! Now Robbie is almost in high school, so okay, three na lang. Life happens, you know?”

She and Dodot agreed to one rule when it comes to raising their kids: “Let’s not make contra each other in front of them.”

8 The one lesson she learned from the toughest time of her life: “You can only just do your best. You cannot please everybody no matter what you do.

“There was a personal side to it, a legal side to it, it involved my sport, my passion, my family, everything dear to me. God has always been so good to me that whenever something is not right in one aspect of my life, there is something that is. When all of that was happening, it was a stressful period, but it was the personal side that made it really difficult,” she shares. “God opened up so many things for me from that painful experience. That bad experience of having to deal with it and having to overcome it apparently became one of the things that the IOC (International Olympic Committee) liked about me. Because I have experience in conflict resolution related to sports.” (Last year, Mikee was elected into the IOC as a representative to the Philippines, only the third Filipino with that honor.)

9 Mikee Cojuangco in numbers:

17: Age when her Swatch commercial aired.

3: Number of major medals won. An individual gold and a team silver at the 2002 Asian Games, and a team gold at the 2005 SEA Games.

6: Number of surgeries she’s had. Three were sports related, and the other three were the C-sections for her kids.

8: Number of hours a day she trained at the peak of her riding career. “Now when I train, maybe one and a half hours.”

12: Number of horses owned. “My dad has this philosophy that I wouldn’t be a real rider if I didn’t know how to ride the untrained ones. So he always gave me these racehorses. When I fell off one of them and I already had Robbie, my coach stormed into my dad’s house and said, ‘This is it, this is the last one! You are not giving her another crazy horse! She has a child, Peping!’ That was the last,” she laughs.

She admits she has no secret to looking “forever young.” For that, she thanks her parents who both have good skin, and shares she is “quite low maintenance.”

Turning 40 this year, what message would Mikee give her 50-year-old self? “Life truly begins at 40! You’re only 10 years old, you have a long way to go.”

On what advice she would give her 30-year-old self: “This actually happened all the time throughout my life. But 30 being the year that Dot ran for office, my mindset being that I would be the wife of a congressman, I would say, ‘Life doesn’t always turn out how you plan it, but it always turns out better.’”

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Before, during, and after our interview in her lovely home, Mikee made coffee for us both, checked on her son Renzo who was playing with their dogs, took a phone call from husband Dodot, then son Robbie, then another from mom Tingting, consoled Renzo when he came crying after falling, welcomed home son Raf, chit-chatted a bit more when the recorder was put away, and even escorted me outside the gate when I left. Obviously more than content and fulfilled with her career and her time in the spotlight, she now relishes life simply as a mother, wife and advocate. “Yes, I do have everything,” she once said in an interview with Boy Abunda. I saw for myself that not only is that true, but that with the right mindset, it is possible for any of us too.

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Email me at askiamsuperbianca@yahoo.com or message me on Twitter at @iamsuperbianca.