Pilot Jessup Bahinting, also a social worker ready to help, lend plane for free

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InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5

MANILA , Philippines - Sixty-year-old Jessup Bahinting, who died with Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo and two others in a plane crash off Masbate, wasn't just an ace pilot. He was also a social worker, who was always ready to lend a hand and even his own plane for free. 

Bahinting's wife Margarita and his close friend Sylvan "Jack" Jakosalem, former Cebu councilor and current city's traffic official, said Jessup wasn't just an in-demand pilot but a regular disaster relief worker as well. [See related story: Pilot’s wife of 37 years recalls the kiss he forgot to give on Saturday] 

Jessup was in Guinsaugon, Leyte in 2006 to help landslide victims, according to Margarita. 

Her husband also went to Negros Oriental in February 2012 to assist the victims there after the province, particularly, Dumagueta City, was struck by a magnitude-7 earthquake. 

During Sendong (Washi) in December 2011, Margarita said Jessup also lent his hand in evacuating hundreds of typhoon victims, including those from the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, who were hit by flash floods. 

Jakosalem also said that Jessup recently helped save the life of Ronaldo Aventurado, a zookeeper in Cebu, who was bitten by a cobra.  

Mr. Bahinting, chairman and chief executive Officer of AviaTour, sent his own Cessna plane for free to fly in the antivenom drug from Camiguin to Cebu for Aventurado. 

"He (Bahinting) was my angel. If not for him, my life would not have been extended," an online website quoted Aventurado as saying on Tuesday. 

"I'm so sad. I will try to visit his family. I was blessed with a second life because of him. I could have been dead or paralyzed by now had I not been treated with the anti-venom." said Aventurado in the Visayan language during a separate interview with News5 the same day. 

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