Julie Vega | 40th Death Anniversary [Remastered Video/Audio]

Julie Pearl Apostol Postigo (May 21, 1968 – May 6, 1985) Better known by her stage name Julie Vega, was a Filipina child actress, singer and commercial model. She remains very popular in her native Philippines, years after her death at the peak of her career at age of 16. She won two FAMAS Awards for Best Child Actress during her brief showbiz career. Not long after her high school graduation in 1985, Vega began complaining of extreme weakness and lack of sensation, particularly on her lower body. This prompted her parents to bring her to a private hospital. She was later diagnosed with a form of demyelinating disease, which was highly suspected to be either Guillain–Barré syndrome  or multiple sclerosis. As Vega's condition became worse, her parents were forced to have her confined to the Quezon Institute as they could no longer afford the increasing amount of her hospital bills. Sometime after her confinement there, she contracted bronchopneumonia, making her condition even worse than before. Vega was transferred to the Lung Center of the Philippines in Quezon City at about 5:00 p.m on Monday, May 6, 1985 where she died suddenly around 1½ hours later at the hospital's intensive care unit, just fifteen days shy of her seventeenth birthday. Her cause of death was officially listed as cardiac arrest secondary to bronchopneumonia. Vega's father Julio would himself die of lung cancer exactly six years later in the same hospital. Her untimely death left Anna Liza with an incomplete storyline and the Filipino people in total shock. After lying in state at Mount Carmel Church in Quezon City, her body was laid to rest right next to those of her father, brother and paternal grandmother at the Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina City in a funeral attended by millions of grieving fans and colleagues from Philippine showbiz. At the time of her death, Vega left behind a large body of unfinished work aside from Anna Liza. She was supposed to promote her debut album First Love, do a second album for Emerald containing all Filipino .language songs, perform with Imelda Papin in singing engagements both in the Philippines and abroad, start hosting two television shows (her own, Julie and Friends on Maharlika Broadcasting System, and as alternate host of Student Canteen on GMA), and star as one of the mainstays of the then upcoming teen-oriented talent show That's Entertainment on GMA.[citation needed] She was also supposed to attend the University of the Philippines for her college education.