College to honour slain high school student; parents will get diploma he planned to earn

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This article was published 26/06/2019 (1912 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An honorary business diploma that will be presented Friday to Jaime Adao’s parents Imelda and Jaime Sr., represents one of their son’s dreams, they say.

They’ll receive the Booth University College business administration diploma in honour of their 17-year-old son, Jaime, who was killed March 3 in a home invasion at their McGee Street house police believe was fuelled by methamphetamine.

Jaime would have graduated Thursday night from Tec Voc High School. He planned to pursue business administration studies at Booth, his mother said.

Booth president Marjory Kerr is expected to make the presentation at the family’s Sheppard Street bakery at 1 p.m.

“It’s awesome. It’s really overwhelming,” Imelda said, adding that Kerr and Booth vice-president Michael Boyce visited the bakery last week to tell the family about the honorary diploma.

“It’s a fulfilment. Because we would always tell him, Son, you are our only hope because your siblings did not finish (college or university), so please do it for us. We always hope the best for him. He would just listen,” Imelda said.

Jaime told his parents that he planned, after earning his business diploma, to attend Red River College to study culinary arts to pursue his love of baking and cooking. He had already started studying culinary arts at Tec Voc.

The Adaos’ other two sons and three daughters, who all live in the Philippines, are in Winnipeg to support their parents and help out in the two Jimel’s Bakery locations.

Imelda said she cleaned out Jaime’s school backpack recently and found a list of goals he had written down as part of a school assignment — stepping stones, short term, long term and lifetime goals.

Reading from the list, Imelda said his stepping stones and short-term goals included activities such as eating breakfast, getting to class on time, going sleep early, exercising, handing in homework on time, eating healthier and having a good attitude.

“His long-term goals were start a business and buy a house. But look, his lifetime (goals) are empty,” Imelda said. “I think there is one, but he erased it.”

She could still read “financial stability” as a lifetime goal from his pencil’s indentation in the paper.

On another page, he listed colours, and what they meant to him; black represented “death, evil” and red, his favourite colour, was “love.”

Imelda is continuing to learn about her youngest son’s kind and deeply spiritual nature.

“He had this poem with him in his backpack: ‘Creator, help me, ease my pain; Do not let my prayers be in vain; Raise me gently to your clouds on high; Comfort us survivors ’til the day we die,'” Imelda read from A Survivor’s Poem by Terry Lusty of Edmonton.

Between the ages of three and 16, Lusty survived eight years of residential school in Manitoba and four foster homes. He later earned a university degree and became a teacher, poet, author and photographer.

“It was in his binder. I framed it for at home,” Imelda said.

Ronald Bruce Chubb, 29, is charged with second-degree murder and Geordie Delmar James, 34, is charged with manslaughter in her son’s slaying.

Jaime and his grandmother were in their home on the 700 block of McGee Street March 3 when a break-in was reported at about 9 p.m. The teen was attacked with a weapon while calling 911. Arriving officers fired a shot to stop the attack, police said.

Both James and Chubb — who recovered from the gunshot wound — have lengthy criminal records.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca