At 15, he was hired by the Manila Times as a full-time cub reporter and assigned to cover the police and miscellaneous beats. He soon proved his salt by becoming the paper's leading scoopmaker.

At 17, he found himself in Korea as the paper's war correspondent. His remarkable dispatches from the battlefront were quite credible, coming as they did from the actual firing line assigned to the Filipino contingent. He was wounded and had to be sent back to Manila and assigned to the army beat. At 18, President Quirino awarded him with a Legion of Honor medal and a parade in his honor, attended by the Armed Forces Chief of Staff.

At 20, he once again found himself on foreign soil: as a Southeast Asian roving correspondent, interviewing state leaders as Chiang Kai-shek. He wrote prodigious political articles about China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Burma.

At 21, he wrote a screenplay that was made into a movie, Korea (1952). It was nominated for that year’s FAMAS awards: Best Picture and Best Screenplay (for Ninoy).

At 22, he was tapped as President Magsaysay's political affairs officer and was provided living quarters in Malacañang. At 23, he earned another Legion of Honor medal for having negotiated the surrender of Luis Taruc, then Southeast Asia's No. 1 communist.

He ran for and became the youngest municipal mayor at age 23, although he was subsequently unseated by the Supreme Court for being underage. But at 27, he became the youngest vice governor, and at 29, the youngest governor.

in the interim, the 6,000-hectare sugar plantation that he managed raked in the biggest harvest after he had converted it into a mini-welfare state.

Pursuing a political career, at 35, he became the youngest senator. At 40, he became the leading oppositionist to the Marcos regime. When Martial Law was declared, he was incarcerated at Fort Bonifacio. At 41, he was charged with murder, subversion, and illegal possession of firearms. At 45, he was sentenced to death by firing squad. An international outcry stayed the executioner's hand. He appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court.

After seven years and seven months of languishing in prison, he suffered a heart attack and was allowed to leave with his family for the United States where he underwent a triple by-pass surgery. Afterwards, he was offered a fellowship at Harvard and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At age 51, concerned about a communist takeover of the Philippines, he decided to return home to help Marcos find a peaceful solution. On August 21, 1983, as he alighted from his plane at Manila International Airport, he was assassinated before his feet could touch the ground of his beloved homeland.

It took his death to unite all the Filipino people who were hurt and hounded by Marcos for eleven years since the US-supported Martial Law was declared in 1972.

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