By Ryan Tejero
Every once in a community’s lifetime, a shining star shows up on the horizon to manifest its glowing presence to make everyone’s lives better and brighter. One such star is Ethel R. Mercado of Dallas, Texas. Her greatness as a humble, unselfish and tireless community servant is unequalled throughout the state where she is inarguably the most admired and most respected by the many thousands of lives that she has touched.
Her 40 years record as a community servant (she eschews the term “community leader” and shuns the spotlight) was capped by a decade of generous and self-sacrificing service to more than 40,000 Filipinos in the state as a non-paid Honorary Consul for the state and later for the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex when the Houston Consulate was re-opened 6 years ago.
According to former L.A. Consul-General Adel Cruz, in the many years that Ethel was Honorary Consul before the re-opening of the Houston Consulate, she was THE one-woman Philippine Consulate in Texas who also served the Filipinos in neighboring states such as Oklahoma, Arkansas and New Mexico. The Consular Outreach Program that she organized and helped fund 5 times a year in Dallas, Houston and Rio Grande Valley in collaboration with the L.A. Consulate and with huge support from her loyal and hardworking Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Texas volunteers, have saved Filipinos in Texas millions of dollars by not having to travel to Los Angeles to have their passports renewed or to apply for dual citizenship. In a speech before the DFW Filipinos, former Consul General Mary Jo Ramirez said: “The Consular Outreach program led by Honorary Consul Ethel Mercado is Community Service at its finest!”
In her almost 10 years as Honorary Consul, in addition to volunteering her time, she donated $65,000.00 every year to her position for salary of full-time staff and office rent and costs. Few, if any community leaders would make that personal sacrifice of almost $650,000.00 for a cause that one believes in, even if sometimes, it feels thankless. When former Consul General Leo Herrera Lim visited Dallas, he remarked: “Ethel’s job and my job are the same, we do the same things except I am the smarter one. Because I get paid and she does not!” The vast majority of the Filipinos that she has helped were very grateful even as a few were skeptical and thought she was making a big salary from the Philippine government.
Madam Ethel who now carries the official title of “Consul Emeritus”, retired last year for health and family reasons. She respectfully declined the offer from President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to continue. She served under three Philippine presidents and five Consuls General. In one of his columns in the Philippine Daily Star, Philippine Ambassador to the U.S. Jose Manuel “Babe” Romualdez paid tribute to Ethel for her unstinting dedication to community service and for holding the fort in Texas in the years prior to the re-opening of the Houston Consulate. At the inaugural Gala of COFACC, the powerful national Coalition of Filipino-American Chambers of Commerce, L.A. Consul-General Adel Cruz surprised her with a rousing tribute and a very generous plaque of appreciation. And at the last celebration of Philippine Independence Day in Dallas on June 8, 2024, Houston Consul Marco Angelo Lopez read to her a very special letter of appreciation from Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique Manalo.
Ethel is the Founding State President of the Philippine-American Chamber of Commerce of Texas founded in 2009 which now has 5 very active chapters in Dallas, Houston, RGV, San Antonio and Austin. Under Ethel’s stewardship, PACC Texas was voted “Most Outstanding Filipino Organization in the U.S. for Community Service, Business Development and Aid to the Philippines” at a national convention in San Diego of the NAFFAA (National Federation of Filipino-American Associations). PACC Texas is now the biggest and among the most active Filipino chambers in the country, with more than 1,000 paid members.
She served as National President of the Federation of Philippine-American Chambers of Commerce and led three trade, tourism and humanitarian missions to the Philippines and created partnerships between many U.S. and Philippine businesses. Among the biggest accomplishments of her trade missions was the introduction of U.S.-based Verizon officials to the Philippines in 2007. Verizon now has more than 10,000 call center/BPO and technical support operators in the Philippines and has brought more than $100 million in revenues to the Philippine economy. Amazing what a simple, unheralded trade mission led by the right people can do!
Her trade missions introduced Fil-Am investors to Small-Medium Entrepreneurs (SMEs) and business opportunities in 13 provinces in South and Central Luzon including Subic and Clark. According to the hosts, the successful 2014 Trade Mission was “the biggest and best-organized U.S. Filipino Trade Mission to the Philippines ever.”
Also as founder of the Philippine Charities Inc. and the PACC Texas Foundation, she has led a massive relief campaign to provide rapid response to the victims of natural disasters in the Philippines, notably as national coordinator of the “Operation Save Lives” for the victims of super typhoon Yolanda, the strongest and deadliest typhoon ever recorded in the history of the planet that affected the lives of 10 million Filipinos in 8 provinces. She also spearheaded the “Bangon Batangas” support for the refugees from the deadly eruption of the Taal Volcano where her hometown of Ibaan, Batangas was designated as a permanent relocation center for thousands of refugee families. She also led a PACC Texas medical mission for the victims of Typhoon Ondoy treating a record 1,642 medical and dental patients in one day. When Hurricane Harvey submerged major Texas cities in 2017, she helped mobilize rapid-response teams of volunteers to gather and distribute relief goods, canned goods and medical supplies directly to victims. Her company, Datalogix, also quickly volunteered their engineers to restore communication service at damaged cell towers in the flooded areas.
She takes care of Filipinos in North Texas who are victims of injustice, discrimination and crimes. With numerous military bases, Texas has a large share of abused Filipina military wives and mail order brides, many of them escaping from their husbands, or abandoned, and a few of them murdered. She has also rescued and repatriated homeless Filipinos who have been victimized by human traffickers and unscrupulous recruiters and lawyers.
When her husband Gus Mercado was NAFFAA’s Region Chair, she worked with him in advocating for, and winning the acquittal and release of 10 innocent Filipino airline mechanics (the “Texas 10”) who were wrongly incarcerated for 6 months in Texas prisons as an over-reaction to 9/11. The dynamic duo raised national awareness and funds for their legal defense, gathered and sent 1,000 petition signatures to then President George W. Bush and she cared for their families during their weekly visits to their husbands for six months until their eventual release.
Myrna Carreon, past president of FILCON (Filipino Leaders Coalition of North Texas), the PACC DFW Region and several other organizations summed up the sentiments of Filipinos in Texas in these words: “It is rare to come across leaders who command honor, respect and dignity. To many of us, you are a mentor and a true friend. You lead with humility and grace and we could not have accomplished what we have without your leadership and inspiration. Your work ethic is unmatched and your innovative and caring ways when addressing crises should be emulated. A sincere thanks from the bottom of all our hearts.”
Among her many community awards, Mrs. Mercado was voted to “100 Most Influential Filipino Women in the U.S.” by the prestigious Filipino-American Women’s Network (FAWN); election to the Filipino-American Business Leaders Hall of Fame (2013); named “Most Outstanding Asian-American Woman Entrepreneur in 2013” by the Greater Dallas Asian-American Chamber of Commerce (GDACC); “Gintong Alay Award” (2015) by the Filipino community in North Texas, among others.
While working on her social and humanitarian projects round the clock, Mrs. Mercado still finds time to serve as President and CFO of Datalogix, a family-owned provider of wireless engineering services to AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon. Datalogix is the first Filipino-owned full contractor in the U.S. wireless telecom industry, giving high-paying jobs to hundreds of minority engineers, mostly Filipinos, in many states. During the grand opening of its Operations HQ in Union City, Datalogix was cited in the Bay Area media as “a minority-owned company that creates jobs in Silicon Valley while others are retrenching.”
When she won GDACC’s “Most Outstanding Asian American Woman Entrepreneur in 2013”, Rowena Watters, State Chair of PACC Texas and now a Councilwoman in Carrollton, Texas wrote for the Asian Magazine: “Ethel has a quintessential maternal persona. Unassuming and quietly direct, she carries an aura of a woman with elegant simplicity and kindness which belie a keen mind and drive that any professional would envy. Never posturing. Never condescending. And still a success in a male-dominated industry. Don’t mess with Ethel. And never, ever underestimate the power and strength that lie within a seemingly unassuming woman.”
Ethel has held executive/management positions with J.C. Penney, Rockwell-Alcatel and Blue Cross-Blue Shield before devoting full time to their family business in 2003. She is married to civic and business leader Gus Mercado from the same hometown in Batangas, with 4 highly-accomplished children and 5 gorgeous grandchildren. Ethel is an avid golfer and enjoys golfing in the Philippines.
Consul Ethel has been a strong supporter of ONE PHILIPPINES since its inception. She personally awarded an official plaque of appreciation to the star performers from the Philippines at the annual Fiesta Ko sa Texas.
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