Profile: Methet Truscott

By Dawne Belloise

While she’s one of the newest residents in town, Methet Truscott is certainly no stranger to Crested Butte. She’s been visiting here with her husband, Rick Truscott, since 1997, although Rick lived here a few years back in the ‘90s. 

As a Filipino, Methet comes from a rich cultural background which is very community and family oriented and steeped in Catholicism. Her home town of Calaca is small and quaint with old Spanish Colonial houses and the well-known St. Raphael Archangel church. Although the population is in the thousands, Methet says everyone seems to know each other. “It’s a small town with a large community because we’re all very close. We were always surrounded by friends and family growing up and always doing something together,” she tells of the many fiestas and gatherings where everything revolves around food and family. “There’s always food,” she smiles. 

Methet’s mom was a school teacher and her father was overseas a lot, employed as an instrumentation engineer for oil and gas companies. As kids, they were always outdoors, playing tag or hide and seek, and although there was no internet they had the beach that was only a few minutes’ walk from her home. 

Methet attended a very strict Catholic school, she says. “Our teachers were nuns. I grew up a good Catholic girl.” In elementary school, Methet was involved in dancing, singing and was also on the track and field team. She graduated from high school in 1989 and enrolled at Centro Escolar University in Manila. “I wanted to be a doctor,” she determined, and signed up for medical technology. “All I did was study,” she says of her college days, but she surrounded herself with other studious friends to keep herself on track. “It was very intense at university.” However, she really enjoyed her newfound freedom. “It felt so different to be away from home and independent, to be able to travel on my own.” Methet graduated in 1993 with a Bachelor of Science in Medical Technology.

Having passed the medical technology board exam, Methet worked for two years as a technician at a hospital but realized that she didn’t actually like that career. “Working in a hospital is very depressing,” she says, and seeing people suffer weighed on her. “I had wanted to be a doctor to cure people. I was assigned to a hospital for all the AIDS patients in the Philippines. It was heartbreaking. I was in the lab the whole time, drawing and examining blood,” she tells.

Coming from conservative Catholic traditions, her father felt that four years of college was enough and it was time for Methet to find a good husband and start a family. She feels that part of his attitude stemmed from the fact that her father was always working abroad and her mom was a full-time teacher, “So we grew up with a nanny.” But it is also the culture of the Philippines.

Methet knew herself to be a very social person and wanted to meet people in a fun environment, so she took a position as a food attendant at the Manila Peninsula Hotel. It was there, eight months later, that she met her husband-to-be, Rick, who was staying at the hotel. However, that wasn’t where they had their first real connection. In the Philippines, it is not considered proper for a woman to go on a date unescorted or for a friendly meeting with a man. So when Rick asked Methet’s girlfriend out for a friendly dinner, Methet went along as the chaperone. Rick had wanted a local to show him the city and meet new friends since he was working and living there. “We really connected and enjoyed each other’s company and conversation,” Methet recalls, more so than her friend did. “It developed into something special,” and Methet then got her cousin to chaperone her first real date with Rick in 1995.

In Filipino culture, asking for a woman’s hand in marriage requires that the entire family approve. However, Rick was unaware that as the prospective groom, he needed to show up with his entire family as well as his future bride for an ensuing party and feast for both families. Not knowing the culture, Rick showed up at Methet’s family home without Methet and without his family and fanfare. “He asked my parents’ permission before he proposed to me, without me knowing that he went to my family first,” she laughs. Having survived prior family meetings and enduring the test of eating pig brains offered by Methet’s father and uncles, the proposal to marry was accepted by the family even though he arrived solo. The couple married in 1997 in her hometown with Rick’s family attending as well. 

Rick had been splitting time between Manila and Jakarta, Indonesia, for work and after the wedding they moved to Jakarta where he took a full-time position. “Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country and Jakarta is a large city,” she says, so it offered a lot more activities. “People were very friendly. It’s a very populous country.”

 

The couple had planned to travel and see the world, “But as a good Catholic girl, I got pregnant right away,” she grins. Their daughter Missah was born in July of 1998 in Singapore, “Because there was a lot of unrest and riots in Jakarta at the time and we were scared all the hospitals would be closed.” Right afterwards, in 1999, Rick’s company relocated him to Bangkok, Thailand, where they lived through 2011. During that time, they had three sons. Qino was born January of 2000, Caleb in June 2002 and Raim in 2010.

Life in Bangkok suited Methet. They lived in an old Thai house built from teakwood with easy access to the perks and excitement of the sprawling, bustling city. As a full-time mom with four kids, her life revolved around driving them to school, after-school activities and doing what all the other expat moms did, going to lunches, the gym, playing tennis and meeting at the club. 

“It was fun. I couldn’t work because I was a foreigner. Besides, every time I thought about going back to work, I got pregnant,” she laughs. With an eye toward the future and retirement, they built their dream house in Chonburi, Thailand, in 2006. Chonburi is near Pattaya, which is famous for its red light district and old men with a different tourist agenda. “But we were 12 kilometers away. We didn’t want our kids growing up around Chonburi,” she says. “In the beginning it was hard there because I loved being in Bangkok where everything is easily accessible, everything is right there but Chonburi is a province and access to a lot of things isn’t as easy because everything is far away, so you have to drive everywhere.” 

When Rick’s company sold its Thailand-based business in 2011, the family moved to Hong Kong. “It’s a beautiful city, it has beaches, mountains, hiking and also 7.4 million people,” she tells of one of the most densely populated territories in the world. But she also says, “If I could afford to live in Hong Kong I would, but it’s just too expensive. We lived in a village house, not in the main city center. We were in the new territory close to China. I enjoyed it and there are more Filipino communities there.” It’s where Methet discovered her fondness for hiking. “Hiking is everywhere in and outside of the city because it’s so popular.” She also joined the Hong Kong Ladies Tennis League, spending her mornings playing tennis and the afternoons running the kids around to their activities.

Back in 1997, Rick had taken Methet to Crested Butte because he wanted her to experience it. They visited every year since and Methet learned to ski here. They bought a house on Whiterock in 2002 and rented it to locals. Methet says they realized, “Two of our kids went to university in the U.S. and have jobs in the states. We realized we wouldn’t be seeing them as much as we’d like to if we were in Asia,” so they chose to stay in the U.S. “The kids all agreed that CB was where they wanted to be and would visit us there.” They bought a house at Eighth and Maroon in 2020, moving to CB full-time in 2023 when Rick retired that September. Methet stayed in CB with Raim in school at CBCS while Rick finished his job in Hong Kong.

Since she was still on a tourist visa, she had to leave in February this year and split her time between Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines until her resident visa came through this May. “It took a year-and-a-half to get the visa.” Methet’s plan, now that she’s here, is to see her kids more often and she and Rick also want to explore the U.S. and spend more time with his family in Oklahoma. “Raim is 14 now and spends time playing soccer, basketball, skiing and hanging out with friends. He’s going into ninth grade. The people have been so welcoming. He fit in right away,” she says. 

As for Methet, she’s loving every aspect of the outdoors. “We’ve made new friends and still have our long-time friends here. Right now, we’re enjoying living in CB. After Raim graduates from high school, the plan is to split the time between Thailand and here but for now CB is the place where the kids will always come back to visit us because they love skiing and summer.”