NBI nabs woman who allegedly gave OFW heroin-filled luggage

CAUAYAN CITY, Isabela — National Bureau of Investigation-Cagayan Valley agents arrested on Wednesday a woman who allegedly asked a Filipina domestic helper — on her way to work in China — to bring a luggage which supposedly contained 4.11 kgs of heroin. The Filipina maid, Sally Ordinario-Villanueva, 32, is now on China’s death row with two other Filipinos — a man and another woman — after having been sentenced to die by lethal injection next week. Arrested just around 4 p.m., Wednesday, was one Tita Cacayan in Barangay Rizal, Alicia town this province. She was the one who allegedly gave Ordinario-Villanueva the luggage with the contraband on Dec. 23, 2008. Special investigator Michael Calimag led the NBI team.
Ordinario-Villanueva hails from Gumbauan, Echague also of this province. The NBI was able to trace Cacayan — a labor recruiter — in a letter Ordinario-Villanueva wrote to her husband, Hilarion Villanueva, naming the recruiter as the owner of the heroin-filled luggage. Cacayan was a neighbor of Ordinario-Villanueva’s grandparents in Barangay Rizal. The Ordinarios and the Villanuevas have been pointing at Cacayan as allegedly the culprit behind the heroin smuggling that carries the death penalty in China. Also, in China’s death row with Ordinario-Villanueva is Ramon Credo, 42, who was convicted of drug smuggling on Dec. 28, 2008 for bringing in 4.113 kgs of heroin. Elizabeth Batain, 38, was convicted on May 24, 2008 of the same crime for bringing in 6.8 kgs of heroin in Shenzhen. Ordinario-Villanueva and Cerdo will be injected with lethal substance by Chinese authorites next Feb. 21, and Batain a day later. The NBI is yet to give further details surrounding Cacayan's arrest. A mother's tears, sleepless nights Detained for about two years now, Ordinario-Villanueva was convicted of drug smuggling in Xiamen, China on Dec. 24, 2008. Sally’s mother Edith Ordinario, is flying to China to be with her daughter, according to the Ordinario family. Since learning of her daughter’s fate, Mrs. Ordinaio, has had many sleepless nights crying for her daughter “who went abroad just to earn income for her family," a member of the Ordinario family said. Her in-laws pictured Ordinario-Villanueva as a kind and loving mother to her two children and a breadwinner to her family. Her in-laws also believed that she was possibly held hostage by a drug syndicate and an illegal recruiter. She went to Macau for the first time in 2006 to work as a maid. After coming back to the Philippines, Ordinario-Villanueva decided to work as a sales clerk in a mobile phone store in China. Her recruiter allegedly asked her to bring a luggage for her employer, the same luggage packed with 4.11 kgs of heroin that landed her not in a mobile phone store but on death row, her relatives said. — VS, GMA News