Corona Family Awaits Word From Philippines on Hostage

An awkward vigil continued Tuesday night in a quiet Riverside County neighborhood as a Corona man’s family waited to hear if he had been beheaded by Philippine rebels.

The Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, who seek to establish an Islamic state in the southern Philippines, this week claimed that they had executed Guillermo Sobero, one of three Americans they kidnapped last month along with 17 Filipinos. State Department officials said they have not confirmed the death.

Sobero is by all accounts a doting father of four, a gregarious friend and a hard-working, self-made businessman. He was also supposed to have been in Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border, celebrating his 40th birthday with relatives. That’s where his wife thought he was, anyway.

Instead, Sobero was in the Philippines with a girlfriend, said Corona Police Sgt. Brent Coleman, whose agency first became involved when the man was reported missing. And that has made an already traumatic situation awkward for family and friends.

Sobero apparently had hidden his new relationship from his wife, whom he is in the process of divorcing, and from his friends. The revelation has divided the neighborhood largely along gender lines, with most men defending him and most women saying that--right or wrong--their sympathy has been dampened.

Friends have been distributing yellow ribbons, asking neighbors to tie them to trees in their front yards in a show of support for the family. But one man said his wife was so offended that she refused to allow him to place a ribbon in their yard.

“The whole thing has gotten so twisted,” said Cherrill Renwick, a neighbor and friend of the family who has visited Fanny Sobero, Guillermo’s wife, regularly since the May 27 kidnapping.

“It depends on whether you ask a man or a woman. It’s silly. I mean, a life is a life. But it’s there. . . . She has mixed emotions.”

Friends and relatives continued holding out hope Tuesday night, correcting themselves, at times, when they referred to Sobero in the past tense.

“My brother Guillermo is a good man,” younger brother Alberto Sobero said Tuesday from his home in Cathedral City, near Palm Springs.

“He is a caring father. He does not deserve this fate. The only thing this group will be doing is devastating a family. They will be devastating four children. He has parents, sisters, brothers. He is the strength behind our family.”

Guillermo Sobero, a waterproofing contractor, was one of 20 people abducted from the resort on Palawan island by the Muslim rebel group, which has executed hostages in the past.

A leader of the Abu Sayyaf rebels, Abu Sabaya, called a radio station early Tuesday to announce that the rebels had beheaded Sobero. “Find his body,” Sabaya challenged authorities.

While some military intelligence reports in the Philippines have suggested that Sobero was indeed killed, other government investigators remain skeptical of the group’s claims. At least one torso has been found by Philippine military officials searching Basilan island, south of Manila. Initial reports suggested, however, that Sobero’s body was not found, and U.S. officials said they could not confirm the identity of the torso.

“We’re working with the Philippines to follow up, determine the identification of the body that’s been found,” State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker told reporters Tuesday.

“We would condemn in the strongest possible terms the reported action, and we hold the Abu Sayyaf group responsible, not only for the action but for the safety and well-being of the other hostages, including the Americans,” he said.

Later Tuesday, Philippine Senate President Aquilino Pimentel said in Los Angeles that he had been told by officials in his office that Sobero’s death had been announced by Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and by Arroyo’s press secretary, Noel Cabrera.

But early today, Cabrera told The Times that the president’s office had received no report that her forces had recovered the body of an American. “There is no such thing as an American body having been found,” Cabrera said.

U.S. and Philippine officials have not identified the woman Sobero was with--either by name or nationality--and have not said if she was among those captured by the rebels.

The FBI and Corona police have dispatched chaplains and counselors to the Sobero home to comfort his wife.

All told, for Sobero’s friends and relatives, it has been a maddening dilemma.

“She’s handling it quite well,” Manuel Contreras, 60, a close friend of Guillermo Sobero, said of Fanny Sobero after a visit Tuesday. “But she is extremely anxious.”

The Soberos’ three children, ages 2, 3 and 6, do not know anything about their father’s ordeal, relatives said. Sobero’s older daughter from a previous marriage, a 13-year-old who lives with grandparents, is aware of it.

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Times staff writers Eric Malnic in Los Angeles, Douglas Haberman in Corona, Esther Schrader in Washington and special correspondent Sol Vanzi in Manila contributed to this report.