Born Aug. 10, 1936, Fe Tio is the eldest daughter of a full-blooded Chinese father and a mother of Filipino-Spanish parentage.
While in high school at Silliman University in Dumaguete, Lucio who was Buddhist became a born-again Christian, resulting in his father disowning him.
He was a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) officer at the Univ. of the Philippines in Manila where he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in business management and finance.
After graduation, he taught English in a Christian mission school in Cebu. Later, he became chief editor of a Cagayan de Oro-based newspaper and then a deputy governor in the Mindanao provincial government as well as general manager and vice president of Texaco Oil, an American oil company.
In his spare time, he volunteered as a church planter, serving with American Presbyterian missionaries. Through some of these missionaries, he met Salvacion Miranda, a church pianist who was the eldest daughter of a converted Spanish Catholic Jesuit priest.
After a long courtship, they were married in 1934. Fe, their eldest child was born two years later.
One of the top Filipino guerilla leaders in Mindanao, Lucio was a World War II hero. Gen. Douglas Macarthur, the Field Marshall of U.S. forces in the Pacific, visited Lucio’s house when Fe was a young child after he escaped from Corregidor on his way to Australia.
Later, Lucio was executed after he was captured by the Japanese.
When she was in Grade II, she learned about Jesus in Sunday school and asked Him to be her Savior. Previously a disobedient girl, her life started to change. She started telling her friends about Jesus.
She had her first teaching experience when, as a high school senior in her hometown Ozamis City, she taught first- and second-year students while substituting for a home economics teacher who had suddenly resigned.
She completed her Bachelor of Science in Education degree majoring in home economics at Phil. Women’s University in Manila.
One of the country’s top Girl Scouts in the 60s, she worked as a Girl Scout executive for six years at Ozamis City after graduation from college.
Later, she married Dr. Joel Colinco, a surgeon who would later write the lyrics of the MCC alma mater song. (A Silliman University music graduate, their eldest child Jewel, composed its music.)
After she and her family moved to Bacolod City, Fe helped her brother-in-law, Pastor Samuel Irving Colinco Sr., in various ministries of Maranatha Baptist Church which he pastored.
She served as the administrative officer of the Maranatha Baptist Bible College, head of the Advancing the Ministry of the Gospel feeding program, and Home of Hope Orphanage, both of which were then new MBC ministries.
At the same time, she was a pioneer teacher of what is now known as the Sum-ag National High School and later at the Luis Hervias National High School, both of which had been newly opened at that time.
Chairperson of the home economics department, guidance counselor, and assistant principal of the LHNHS, she was being groomed for promotion as a principal in another public high school when Pastor Colinco asked her to help him start the Maranatha Christian High School which she had told him was needed by vulnerable Christian youth.
Encouraged by her husband, she acceded to the request of her brother-in-law who was at the same time her pastor.
She processed, together with Pastor Edgardo Agtoto, the paperwork required for the school’s permit to operate what would be one of the earliest Christian schools in the city.
She also raised funds for the construction of its main academic building, visited homes in the surrounding areas to campaign for enrollees, and made other preparations for the school’s opening on June 13, 1983.
She served as its first principal for six school years, leading the school and its band of volunteers serving as missionary-teachers as it struggled with a lack of funds, inadequate facilities, and other hardships.
It was during those difficult early years however when two students graduated class valedictorian in successive years, both of whom eventually excelled at the national level.
Class 1988 valedictorian Greg Gasataya now sits in the House of Representatives for his third term as representative of the lone district of Bacolod.
Class 1989 valedictorian Brig. Gen. Stephen Agtoto now heads the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ Corps of Professors as its Dean.
An MCHS alumnus from that period with an inspiring success story is Edmund Suarnaba who sold puto (rice cakes) for a living while studying until he was forced to drop out, unable to pay the school’s low tuition. With Fe’s encouragement, he resumed his studies and eventually finished high school as one of the principal’s scholars. He is now a branch manager of a leading commercial bank.
While MCHS principal, she also started the Maranatha Christian Academy, Maranatha Baptist Church’s educational ministry for the pre-school and elementary school levels.
After migrating to the U.S. with her family in 1989, she was briefly a principal for a Christian school in East Orange, New Jersey. It was also called Maranatha Christian Academy, of all things.
Then she was a teaching assistant at the New York City Board of Education and eventually became a certified special education teacher for the same school district.
She worked for about 5 years in the inner city of Bronx, in New York City, teaching math to mentally and emotionally challenged high school students, most of whom were much taller and bigger than her.
She was forced to retire at age 68 when she suffered a mild stroke in 2004.
After her retirement, she was for some time a volunteer at her South Carolina church’s pregnancy center where she participated in its efforts to dissuade pregnant women from having an abortion.
The mother of eight children, she has been blessed so far with 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Mainly because of her influence, several of her children are supporters of MCC’s ministry.
Six years ago, she started the Colinco Medical Mission outreach to honor the memory of her daughter Diane and husband Joel, both healthcare professionals who had died in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
It gives her joy that it has helped over a thousand people in Bacolod so far, based on rough estimates, through a dozen or more medical outreaches.
Blessed with long life at 86 years old, she continues to be a blessing to many as she continues serving Jesus Christ. (She celebrated her 87th birthday last Aug. 10, 2024.)
To God be the glory!
