Biographical Note
Arturo "Art" Pacho was born August 13, 1942, in Manila, the Philippines, to Antonio de la Cruz, a civil engineer, and Ester Pacho, a public health nurse. Pacho attended the University of the Philippines Diliman in Quezon City for his undergraduate studies. In 1966, he wrote a report for the School of Public Administration at the University of the Philippines titled The Public Health of Davao, and the school published it as a limited edition. He went on to earn a masters of public administration at the University of the Philippines Manila in 1967.
Afterwards, Pacho and his wife, Jenny HK Dee, moved to the United States. He continued his graduate work in city and regional planning at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and completed his doctoral studies at Kent State University in Ohio. His doctoral thesis, Policy Agenda of the Ethnic Chinese in the Philippines, was published in 1981. For the next few years, he was a fellow at the University of the Philippines, and he became an assistant professor focusing on local governments, regional policies, and urban development. His major policy involvement was the formation of the Metro Manila Authority, the precursor of the Metro Manila Development Authority. Pacho also did consultancy work for the United Nations in Thailand and completed a fellowship at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
The Pachos then settled in Glendale, California, where he served as a management analyst and civilian adjutant for the Los Angeles Police Department. As members of the Los Angeles Filipino American community, Pacho and Dee actively participated in organizations such as An Taclobanon Association of Southern California, the Filipino American Educators Association (FAEA), the Filipino American Public Affairs Council (FAPAC), and the Filipino American Service Group, Inc. (FASGI).