Kauai News & Information

She plays golf, bridge and has a canary named Elvis, and her grandfather was the last governor of Kauai under Queen Liliuokalani.
Retired elementary school teacher Anna Sloggett will turn 100 this month with an old-fashioned poi luncheon and a golf tournament to benefit a scholarship program started in her honor.
Sloggett, who was born on Kauai in 1906, graduated from Kauai High School and Mills College in California. She went on to teach at Punahou and Kawananakoa Schools before returning to teach elementary school students in Lihue and Kapaa.
“I love kids,” she said in a press release. “My first teaching job was at Lihue School for a salary of $105 a month.”
She taught unconventionally, giving lunch and dinner to students for extra work, and running the bases with one student who had a fear of softball.
“She was warm and adventurous, and showed a personal interest in each one of us,” said Sloggett’s former student Dr. Kathy Hiyane-Brown, president of Normandale Community College. “She somehow created excitement around our spelling tests every Friday.”
On Sept. 17 she will be honored by family, friends and former students on her 100th birthday with an old-fashioned poi luncheon. With entertainment provided by former students, the luncheon will be held at Gaylord’s at Kilohana, a historic plantation estate, starting at 11 am. Tickets are $50.
Also in honor of Sloggett, a golf tournament will be held at the Wailua Golf Course at 7 a.m. Sept. 9.
The funds raised from both events will go to the University of Hawaii Foundation to establish the Anna S. Sloggett Endowed Scholarship fund at Kauai Community College to support Kauai students pursuing elementary education.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to expand its Kauai store into a “supercenter” that would include a full-service grocery store — its first in the state.
The Lihue store would be an island testing ground for the supercenter format, which the Bentonville, Ark.-based corporation has been rolling out through the rest of the nation. Hawaii is one of three states that do not have a Wal-Mart supercenter.
“We have 2,000 supercenters in the U.S.,” said Wal-Mart spokesman Kevin McCall. “Certainly, we know the grocery business. But we want to make sure we have the local flavor, and include certain items.”
McCall said Wal-Mart already buys $150 million worth of local goods from the islands.
“We’re excited about the opportunity to expand the goods we buy in the islands,” he said.
Wal-Mart has submitted an application to Kauai County’s planning department, but the item has not been scheduled for hearings.
Wal-Mart wants to expand its Kauai store from about 119,000 square feet to about 215,000 square feet.
Last week, Wal-Mart celebrated the grand openings of two expanded supercenters on the mainland — one in Springfield, Ore., and one in Chino, Calif. Both are more than 200,000 square feet with a grocery store that includes a bakery, deli, frozen section, meat, dairy, fresh produce, and beer and wine.
McCall said decisions to expand other Wal-Marts in Hawaii to supercenters would be determined case by case.
“Certainly we would consider our options, and evaluate in the future how to best serve customers in other parts of the state,” he said.
Kapolei First, an activist group that opposes Wal-Mart in Kapolei, as well as the United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 480 support a Honolulu City Council resolution to change the city land-use ordinance to block supercenters from Oahu.
The resolution — introduced in July — defines a supercenter as a store measuring more than 90,000 square feet, with more than 20,000 square feet dedicated to groceries and more than 25,000 items.
Hawaii is home to eight Wal-Mart discount stores and two Sam’s Clubs. Wal-Mart on Kauai opened in 1995.
Wal-Mart is planning its ninth store in Kapolei, which it has said will not be a supercenter, but similar in size to its Pearl City store, at about 140,000 square feet.
The Kapolei Wal-Mart is slated to open in 2008.

The Navy will conduct an environmental impact statement analysis of its plans to increase training around Hawaii.
The study will look how the Navy’s use of sonar during exercises affects marine mammals around the islands and how other Navy activities impact the environment.
“It’s any and all Navy training in Hawaii,” said Tom Clements, spokesman at the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai’s Barking Sands.
The Navy intends to hold public meetings around the state next month to gather input on what issues need to be addressed.
Many environmentalists oppose the Navy’s use of active sonar to practice hunting submarines, saying the technology may hurt whales and other marine mammals.
The Navy says its sailors adopt measures to protect marine mammals when they train with sonar.
Earlier this summer, environmental groups sued the federal government to challenge the Navy’s use of mid-frequency sonar during July’s Rim of the Pacific war games off Hawaii.
The sonar portion of the exercises was delayed three days until the two sides agreed the Navy would adopt some additional steps to protect marine mammals.
The environmental impact statement study will analyze how having three aircraft carrier strike groups training around Hawaii at the same time would affect the environment.
It will also look at how an increased training tempo would influence the islands.
A draft environmental impact statement is expected to be completed by May and a final document is scheduled for early 2008.
The Navy plans to hold public meetings on the issue on Maui, Oahu, the Big Island and Kauai from Sept. 13-18. The Navy will also accept remarks from the public through Oct. 13 for possible inclusion in the draft environmental impact statement.
On the Net:Navy Hawaii Range Complex Environmental Impact Statement page:http://www.govsupport.us/navynepahawaii/hawaiirceis.aspx

Six days after a car crash on Kauai killed his mother, father and brother, 5-year-old Lyndon Yim is well enough to leave the hospital. He’s making a fast recovery from the injuries he received in the crash – a collapsed lung and some cuts and bruises.
Friday is when the young, sole survivor returns home and will finish his recovery at a Los Angeles-area hospital.
The boy’s uncle, who was willing to speak exclusively with KGMB9, has the heartbreaking task of escorting him back to California and helping him understand his family is gone.
Several cards decorate his room, well wishes from complete strangers: young students from Saint Teresa’s School in Kauai to Lyndon.
“I heard about the accident and I’m really sorry,” read one card.
“We hope that these cards and pictures will help your body, soul and heart to heal,” read another.
“Very nice,” said Jack Forest, his uncle. “Very nice.”
Lyndon’s parents were killed in the crash. So was his brother, Brandon, who was supposed to have his eighth birthday only two days later.
“Usually he’s the sturdy one compared to Brandon,” said Uncle Jack. “I think that the trauma team and the medical staff did a wonderful job of fixing him up and our families are very grateful for that.”
That’s the only thing he’ll say about the accident. No thoughts about how it happened. Nothing about police reports that say the crash may have been caused by Lyndon’s mother, Lan Yim, when she tried to make a U-turn and collided with a propane tanker truck.
“I don’t really want to discuss about my personal feeling, or feeling about the accident, or feeling about what happened,” said Uncle Jack.
It’s also too hard for him to even talk about his brother’s death, his twin brother.
The only thing Uncle Jack wants to talk about now is how miraculously one member of the family lives and is recovering well in the hospital, and how the wishes of strangers are coming true.
“We hope the rest of your family is happy in heaven,” one card read.

Island Air will launch flights between Lihue International Airport and Keahole (Kona) International Airport beginning next Tuesday, Sept. 5.
It is the first time in over 10 years that any airline has offered a direct flight between these two destinations, said Les Murashige, chief operating officer.
“Our goal is to continue to invest in the community by making traveling between the islands easier,” he said. “Being a Kauai native, I am proud to have this great opportunity to help my hometown.”
This will bring Island Air to 17 individual flight routes, three times as many as any other carrier in Hawaii. It has 103 flights a day.
Flight 176 will leave Lihue at 11:45 a.m. and arrive Kona at 1 p.m. while Flight 177 will leave Kona at 1:25 p.m. and arrive Lihue at 2:40 p.m.

Kauai has been without an inpatient drug and alcohol treatment facility since Serenity House closed after Hurricane Iniki in 1992.
While the situation is slowly improving, many health professionals say Kauai’s addicts are still underreported and underserved.
Officials hope to change things with a new adolescent drug treatment center. Ground was broken last week near Salt Pond Beach Park. Police, politicians, prosecutors and others applauded the new facility.
But the center, which will hold 16 teens and is scheduled to be opened in June, tackles only drug abuse.
For a decade the only treatment available on island was outpatient therapy.
Gail Gnazzo, chief executive officer of the Maui Youth and Family Services, the group selected to provide treatment in the new Kauai center, said about 20 Kauai youths a year travel to the Maui treatment center to get help.
Mardi Maione, a certified substance abuse counselor and head of Kauai Mayor Bryan Baptiste’s drug treatment committee, said there is no way of knowing exactly how many Kauai residents are affected by the disease of addiction, both adults and juveniles.
Between 10 and 25 adults need to go off island for treatment a year, Maione said.
Kauai’s Drug Court has been consistently full. So are the outpatient treatment options currently available.
Hina Mauka, a statewide nonprofit, and Ke Ala Pono, a local treatment center, have provided outpatient care on Kauai for years.
Started just last year, U-turn for Christ, a Christian-based treatment program run by Calvary Church, also has seven patients, said Roy Nishida, Kauai’s anti-drug coordinator.
Still, “they’re underreported” on Kauai, Maione said.
Maione said she is proud to announce Kauai finally has halfway houses for recovering addicts for the first time in more than a decade.
Ke Ala Hoku, a group providing halfway houses, currently serves women, single women with children, and a male house is in the works, Maione said.
But detox programs are nonexistent, and after-care is difficult to find, the experts say.
“Scott,” a longtime alcoholic and drug addict, said he had to lie to get into treatment on Kauai last year. In his 40s and a longtime Kauai resident, he told emergency room officials he was suicidal in order to get admitted to a detoxification program for those dually addicted — drug addicts and mentally ill.
It was his only option to get help, he said. After a month in the Salvation Army program on Oahu, “Scott” has been clean for almost a year.
Despite the gaps in coverage, last week’s celebration was to tout progress.
Maione, who has been fighting to get treatment options on Kauai for about a decade, said there is hope in the community now.
“One little baby step at a time,” she said.

The life of the Yim family had always been focused on the lives of their two boys, Lindon, 5, and Brandon, who would have turned 8 yesterday.
Now, their aunt, Chong Yim, said the focus of their entire extended family is on Lindon, who is recovering from a punctured lung and other injuries at the Queen’s Medical Center.
Lindon Yim’s parents, Yong “Michael” and Lan of Irvine, Calif., died Thursday in a car accident that also killed Brandon along Kauai’s west side.
Their rental car was making a U-turn when a Gas Co. truck going about 50 mph crashed into it, police said. Lan, who was driving, died at the scene. Michael died at Kauai Veteran’s Memorial Hospital. Brandon died en route to Queen’s.
After a few days in critical care and a surgery to repair his lung, Lindon still is not completely sure what happened, Chong said yesterday.
Lindon thinks Michael’s identical twin brother is his dad, she added.
But the little boy is making progress.
“He’s sleeping a lot,” she said, but the prognosis is good. He might be able to leave the hospital within 10 days.
Family members are flying from all over the globe to be with Lindon, she added. Lindon’s mother’s family was expected to arrive in Honolulu from Korea yesterday afternoon, and Chong said she will fly out next week to be with her youngest nephew.
“The boy will be in very good hands,” Chong said. “We are trying to focus on (Lindon) trying to get well.”
Lindon likely will live with his aunt and two cousins in Northern California, Chong continued. Michael’s sister and brother-in-law, an executive with a Silicon Valley company, already have two daughters, ages 7 and 5.
“He’ll be better off there,” she said. They “are more than willing to take him.”
Meanwhile, the family begins to make plans for memorials for the three who died.
Michael Yim, 43, moved to California from Korea in 1968, Chong said, and attended high school in the San Diego area. He went to college in San Diego, and law school at the University of California-Davis.
He was a successful lawyer known by many in the Korean community in Los Angeles, she said.
Lan, 43, was a registered nurse and a doting mother.
Laurie Lawver, whose son was in school with Lindon, said the couple “were always very classy, friendly parents that were very involved with their boys.
“This has been extremely sad for our entire school family and community and just hope Lindon will be all right,” Lawver added. “He is a very smart and happy little boy.”
His older brother, Brandon, was “exceptionally bright,” Chong said, and that’s not just a proud aunt talking. “He was way advanced in his class.
“He loved to read, loved to play piano,” she added. “He loved to teach his little brother everything he knows.”
The two just started playing Little League this year, Chong said.
According to a report in the Orange County Register, the family had a timeshare property on Kauai and told neighbors they were excited about the trip.
“They were in paradise on Earth” before the crash, Chong said.
“They were happy,” she added. “That comforts me.”

Public high school students could get partial scholarships with adequate grades
University of Hawaii President David McClain is proposing a “Century Scholars” program that would give a partial scholarship to any public school student who graduates in the top 10 percent of their class and attends a UH campus.
The program is aimed at recruiting more Hawaii students to stay in the state and attend a UH school or community college and would be incorporated into the university’s celebration of its 100th anniversary next year.
McClain said he is reviewing the details of the proposal and will present it at next month’s Board of Regents meeting on Kauai.
The idea is based on a suggestion by student regent Michael Dahilig, who learned about a similar scholarship program while visiting the University of Alaska.
It offers $11,000 over four years to students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their class, attend a University of Alaska campus and maintain their grades, McClain said.
Based on the number of public high school graduates in Hawaii last year, McClain estimated that about 1,300 students would be eligible for the scholarship.
The university is looking at how many of last year’s top graduates attended a UH campus to estimate the cost of the program.
The amount of money offered and other details of the scholarship would be based on that estimate, he said.
UH may use a mixture of its own special fund money, state money and private donations raised during the UH Foundation’s Centennial Campaign to fund the scholarship program, McClain said.
McClain unveiled the proposal during a workshop on the university budget at the Board of Regents meeting on Friday.
The university is in the midst of a long budget process before administrators present a budget request to the regents and the governor for approval.
The draft UH budget, which McClain is now reviewing, calls for $37.4 million in new state spending next fiscal year and $57 million in the fiscal year ending in June 2009.
The current UH general fund budget is about $383 million.
McClain said the university will be pushing what he calls “access with success” initiatives to the governor and the Legislature, which include the scholarship program and requests for more counselors to help students get financial aid, stay in school and graduate on time. The idea is to increase opportunities for people to take advantage of higher education and to graduate, McClain said.
Other priorities for new students focus on meeting the state’s needs for new workers and diversifying the state’s economy.

Three police officers surrendered at the Kauai Police Department cellblock today.
Sergeant Wesley Perreira, Sergeant Lawrence Stem and Officer Channing Tada have been indicted on charges of theft and record tampering for a county-paid trip they allegedly turned into a vacation on Maui
The three were released after being processed and posting bail. Arraignment is set for Thursday.
A grand jury indictment accuses Perreira, Stem and Tada of using tax dollars to take the trip in September 2005 and then lying about it on records they filed with the police department.
They were supposed to be on Maui for a marijuana eradication seminar. But the three are accused of failing to attend class sessions.

Aloha Airlines launches in one week some new flights that move away from the carrier’s hub-and-spoke system in which all flights lead to Honolulu. It now flies Kahului-Lihue and Kahului-Kona.
It is an important new development in the interisland airline battle, as Aloha, until now going head to head with Hawaiian Airlines and the new Mesa Air Group service go!, now competes head to head with its own former subsidiary Island Air.
Hawaii airline historian and analyst Peter Forman says Aloha sees ticket prices deteriorating on its current routes due to arrival of go!.
“Aloha probably figures there’s more money to be made by moving resources to thinner routes that have been the domain of Island Air for the past few years,” Forman said. “Thus, Island Air will soon indirectly feel the squeeze from the new entrant’s arrival.”
From Friday, Aloha will have two flights daily from Kahului to Lihue and two flights daily from Kahului to Kona International Airport on the Big Island.
“Aloha is responding to our customers’ wishes, making it easier and faster to travel between the islands on the only Boeing 737 jets in Hawaii,” CEO David Banmiller said in June when the service was announced.
Rob Mauracher, CEO of Island Air, said Thursday that the Aloha move still leaves his smaller carrier offering twice as many round trips in the same corridors.
Aloha’s jets are faster, but the difference is only 10 to 20 minutes depending on the route, and Mauracher says his smaller planes confer certain advantages.
“The beauty of our aircraft size and type,” he said, “is that it allows us to be very flexible in our offerings to the market, without burdening us with the requirement to carry 60 or more passengers to cover our costs.”