Tearful Son Pays Tribute To `My Hero' -- 400 Mourn Slain Woman

A sunbeam through stained glass lit up 16-year-old Philbert Dizon's face as he sat at the piano playing "The Lord's Prayer" yesterday for his mother's funeral in Shoreline Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

Later he spoke with quiet strength, bidding farewell to Phoebe Dizon - one of three women and an unborn child shot to death March 2 in the King County Courthouse.

"Death can happen to the best and worst of us," he said. "We shouldn't wait to tell someone we love them."

Calling his mother "my hero," he tearfully recalled her insistence on evening religious devotions, and other loving acts.

The funeral, and burial at Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery, brought out 400 other mourners. They came to pay last respects to Dizon, 46, who was shot three times while she and a friend, Veronica Laureta Johnson, 42, sat outside a courtroom after testifying at an annulment trial for their friend, Susana Blackwell, 25, who was pregnant.

Timothy Blackwell, 47, estranged husband of Susana, is charged with three counts of aggravated first-degree murder and one count of first-degree manslaughter.

Blackwell's body will be sent to the Philippines for burial.

Johnson's funeral was earlier yesterday.

During the service, Philbert Dizon said the loss of his mother has made him feel responsible for helping his father, Gilbert Dizon, raise his two younger brothers, Derek, 4, and Gilbert, 9.

Phoebe Dizon's friend Lilian Caylan, M.D., of Los Angeles, described Dizon's years in the Philippines, when she studied to be a nurse's aide.

She described how Dizon begged her to move to Seattle.

"She wrote me a letter saying, `Please come to Seattle because it's still a safe city. Los Angeles has lots of murders.' "

Nearby in the church sat Dizon's mother, Encarnacion Orbiso; sisters, Edith DaPal and Miriam Parcon; and six other family members who flew in Friday and early yesterday after a battle over visas to let them leave the Philippine Islands.

The U.S. State Department on Wednesday granted a visa to Dizon's brother, Carlito Orbiso, but refused to grant papers to the women until late Thursday, after U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., intervened.

The family suggests remembrances to The Dizon Family Fund, c/o Washington Mutual Savings Bank.