Hilarion Guia was orphaned at age three left to the care of his grandmother Francisca Gonzales. Guia went to the Culion leper colony in May 1950 motivated with the prospect of attaining formal education. He attended the Culion Catholic Elementary School and St. Ignatius Academy.[2] He was declared cured of leprosy in the early 1960s.[3]
Guia moved to the Central Luzon Sanitarium in Tala, Caloocan and enrolled at the Holy Rosary College obtaining a degree in education in 1965.[2][3]
He returned to St. Ignatius Academy in Culion as a teacher and worked there for four decades.[2]
Guia was an advocate of converting Culion, then part of the town of Coron, into a municipality of its own.[4] He became close friends with another advocate and politician, Ramon Mitra, in the 1960s. Senator Mitra filed a bill in 1971 to make Culion a municipality. However the efforts were frozen when President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law.[3]
Along with Catholic priest Ignacio Moreta, Guia campaigned to convince the residents of Culion to support the idea. He argued that if Culion became a municipality, this would lessen its dependence on the Department of Health for services and that as a town Culion would have access to the national budget.[3]
After the People Power Revolution of 1986, Mitra became speaker of the House of Representatives and Congressman Dave Ponce de Leon revived the Culion municipality bill. Culion eventually became a municipality in 1992.[3]
Guia ran in the inaugural mayoral election in May 1995 and bested other candidates who never contracted leprosy.[4][3][5] Emiliano Marasigan was his vice mayor.[6]
After serving as mayor, Guia returned to teaching.[3] He advocated against the social stigma which affected both people afflicted with leprosy and also healthy children who lived in Culion, due to the town's association with leprosy. He died in March 2016.[7]