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| The Remarkable Ruffa G |
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Time and time again, my good friend Ruffa Gutierrez has proven that you can’t put a good woman down. After a stormy couple of years during and following her very public break-up with ex-husband Yilmaz Bektas, she is now gliding more peacefully through life.
As someone close to Ruffa, I was witness to her personal struggles. I first met her when she was a 15-year-old girl with her mom Annabelle. Even then, I viewed her as a kindhearted and nice person.
Over the years, Ruffa and I forged a tight bond that can only be built by sharing common experiences. I’m close to the Gutierrez family because we’ve been present in each other’s lives in both low and high points. Back then, I was just bouncing back from a turbulent career and financial crash when the Gutierrez family was also trying to start a new life in Los Angeles, California. We went through the same challenges as we tried to reinvent our lives. I vividly remember picking up the Gutierrez family (Eddie, Annabelle, the twins, and Ruffa) from the Royal Hotel in my beat-down station wagon.
Siksikan talaga kami sa kotse on our way to my salon on Beverly Blvd. I would give them haircuts. We would share a humble meal of fried galunggong and rice that we ate with our bare hands. Afterwards, I would drive them back to their hotel. Those were simpler times! Ruffa went on to become a sought-after actress and international beauty queen but she would still come back to the states, where she enjoyed relative anonymity, away from the maddening crowd andchismis. I saw the multifaceted Ruffs, as I fondly call her, throughout the years. There’s the fun-loving Ruffa that I went out to clubs with. There’s the kindhearted Ruffa who has passion for helping the less fortunate.
When Ruffa gave birth to Lorin at Cedars Sinai (Beverly Hills), yours truly was also there to help the family welcome the new baby into this world. I saw Ruffa in so much pain that I had to take a moment to thank the Lord for not making me a fullblown woman. And then when Ruffa was in labor with her next baby, I was again at Cedars Sinai with her publicist Jun Lalin to anticipate Venice’s arrival.
After the children’s birth, Ruffa went back to Istanbul to resume her busy life as wife to a multi-millionaire businessman and mother to Lorin and Venice. In between, she preoccupied herself with volunteering for charities and working in fashion as president of Fashion TV Turkey.
Her friends and family had high hopes for her marriage to Yilmaz but as their highlypublicized breakup would show, it’s just not meant to be.Throughout the whole or-deal, Ruffa has tried to be strong and focused. Now that this storm in her life has passed, she now sees beautiful blue skies ahead.
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