Benilda P. Domingo

Bus Ride to Romance
Benilda Domingo was heading home to Laoag City in the Philippines from Manila after two years of menial work in Singapore. Relatives introduced her to the bus driver, Cefar Gabriel. While she had been working abroad, one of her brothers had married one of Mr. Gabriel's sisters. By the end of the nine-hour bus trip, they were in love.

The couple had three children — Daryl, 11, Yvonne, 5, and Lucki Angel, 2. But for 14 years they kept postponing their wedding, said Dorothy Gabriel, Ms. Domingo's sister- in-law, because Ms. Domingo's parents, living in Hawaii with their eldest son, were petitioning United States authorities to allow Ms. Domingo to immigrate, and a spouse would have slowed the process.

Last year Ms. Domingo's visa finally came through, and she brought the three children to America. She planned to return to Laoag City to marry Mr. Gabriel and to bring him over, too.

She left the two younger children with her parents in Hawaii, and took the oldest with her to New York.

Ms. Domingo, 37, found work with an office-cleaning company. "She was so proud that she was hired at the W.T.C.," her sister- in-law recalled by telephone from Canada.

Now Mr. Gabriel, still a bus driver in the Philippines, is even more desperate to come to New York. "He was so devastated," Ms. Gabriel said. "He wants to come to see the place where it happened, and just to be with his kids."