Pam Ling

Pam Ling (born April 21, 1968 in Los Angeles, California) is a Chinese American physician, best-known as a castmate on The Real World: San Francisco, the third season of MTV's long-running reality television show.

On the Real World
On the show, Ling was a Phi Beta Kappa member from Harvard, an overachiever, and in her third year of medical school. In the first few weeks of their stay in the house, she was finishing up a difficult rotation. Like castmate Mohammed Bilal, she was one of the more calm and low-key roommates, and was the one of the last roommates that Puck would agree to talk to during conflict resolutions with the rest of the house. She became close with castmates Pedro Zamora and Judd Winick, and the three became inseparable, with Cory joining them halfway through their stay in San Francisco.

She attempted to maintain a long-distance relationship with her then-boyfriend, and the roomies surprised her by having him visit San Francisco on her birthday, putting on a mock presentation of This is Your Life, with a tuxedo-wearing Judd as the announcer, and her boyfriend as the final person to appear. Unbeknownst to anyone, Judd had developed feelings of his own for Pam, and after she would get home late at night from work and fall asleep with a book across her lap and a pen in her hand, Judd would turn off her bedside lamp, put the book away and cover her up. Pam and Judd supported Pedro by attending his lectures whenever they could.

After the Real World
After the show ended, Pam and her boyfriend broke up while her and Judd’s relationship moved beyond friendship. They visited Pedro in his hometown of Miami as he was hospitalized and their feelings deepened during their visits. On November 11, 1994, the day after the last San Francisco "Real World" episode aired, Pedro died. The death hit Pam and Judd especially hard as they had become the closest to Pedro after leaving the show. Pam and Judd began dating in 1995 and moved in together. They announced their relationship at a Real World Reunion Special which brought together the casts of the first four seasons (Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and London.) Judd, wearing a gorilla suit, proposed to Pam in March 2000 after dating for five years. They married in a civil ceremony on August 26, 2001. Writer Armistead Maupin spoke at their ceremony. They had a child in May 2005 and currently live in the city where they met and lived in their RW house, San Francisco.

The couple still continues Pedro's work in AIDS education. Pam completed her residency in primary care at the University of California, San Francisco, in 1999, and entered into an AIDS-research fellowship. She currently specializes in HIV and AIDS research. Her husband lectures about AIDS and wrote a book about the life of the Zamora entitled "Pedro and Me" [2000].

Sources and external links

 * Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned by Judd Winick (2000; Henry Holt & Co.)
 * The Real World Diaries (1996; Pocket Books; MTV Books)