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Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

[{"text":"We did not know this was even possible.  ","type":"text"}]

Firefly funny illustration of a monster truck in a tropical paradise 185070 Large

<title>Hawai‘i Scene on Social: TACOMA FIGHT!</title>

Today's social media find comes from jensonkona, who keeps on truckin'.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: TACOMA FIGHT!

We did not know this was even possible.   

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

Quarterback coach and trainer Vince Passas, who now lives in Las Vegas, was supposed to have a session on Sunday at 7 a.m. He's in the process of moving that to the evening. 

Passas, a 1974 Saint Louis graduate, got his start in coaching in 1976. During his decades as the quarterbacks coach of Saint Louis' varsity team, he mentored some of the most iconic names in Hawai‘i prep football history: 

, Jason Gesser, Darnell Arceneaux, Marcus Mariota, Tua Tagovailoa, the list goes on. 

Each Saint Louis quarterback seemed to surpass the next one at the collegiate level. Chang set the NCAA passing yardage record as a senior at the University of Hawai‘i in 2004. Mariota won the Heisman Trophy, college football's top individual honor, as a junior at the University of Oregon in 2014. Tagovailoa guided Alabama to a national championship win as a true freshman and then was the Heisman runner-up in 2018. Mariota and Tagovailoa each invited Passas to their Heisman ceremonies in New York. 

On Sunday, Mariota's Washington Commanders and Tagovailoa's Miami Dolphins will go head-to-head in the NFL's Madrid Game, which kicks off at 4:30 a.m. HST on NFL Network, marking the first time the two will start in a game against each other. 

"I'm going to enjoy the game and cheer for both guys, hoping that they score on every possession and that the game ends in a tie," Passas told Aloha State Daily.

Mariota was the second overall pick of the 2015 NFL Draft by the Tennessee Titans, while the Miami Dolphins made Tagovailoa the fifth pick in 2020. Sunday's game will be the second time Mariota's team and Tagovailoa's team will play against each other, though Mariota did not play in the first matchup. In Tagovailoa's rookie year, the Dolphins played against the Las Vegas Raiders on Dec. 26, 2020. Tagovailoa started the game, while Mariota never entered, as Las Vegas starter Derek Carr played the entire way. Tagovailoa was then pulled in favor of backup quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. The Dolphins went on to win 26-25. 

Sunday's matchup between the Dolphins and Commanders will feature a pair of 3-7 teams. Mariota is starting in place of Washington sophomore Jayden Daniels, who suffered a gruesome injury to his non-throwing elbow on Nov. 2. Tagovailoa has been the full-time starter in Miami since Week 1. The Dolphins have struggled with injuries and consistency as a team but are coming off a 30-13 win over the Buffalo Bills, which snapped a seven-game losing streak to the reigning AFC East champions. 

"[The NFL] is not for everyone," Passas said. "It was made for special people, and they're really special individuals. Not just as a human beings and genuine personalities, but you have to be intelligent enough to lead a team. I mean, if you ever heard what one play call sounds like, it's like a whole paragraph."

Chang was helping out at a camp the first time he met Tagovailoa. He had heard the elementary schooler, nephew of current Hawai‘i offensive line coach Derek Faavi, could sling it. Tagovailoa then walked up to Chang and told him he was going to break his high school and college passing records one day. 

"I was like, 'Derek, your nephew just said he's gonna come break my records,'" Chang, now the head coach at Hawai‘i, recalled following a recent practice. "I shook [Tagovailoa's] hand and I laughed and I said, 'Let's go get it then.'"

Tagovailoa went on to surpass Chang's Hawai‘i high school passing yardage record, but not his college yards record. 

"He just had a mindset that he was going to be the best," Chang recalled of Tagovailoa. "I just appreciated watching his growth from a youth from when he said that, and he just kept grinding. All these guys that are playing the NFL, they all have great families and great support systems that just helped guide them and sacrifice so much for them to be where they're at."

 is currently Chang's starting quarterback at UH and the backbone behind the team's 7-3 start. 

"I'm really happy with Micah," Passas said. "You just knew that Micah would be the guy there. He's got great anticipation, gets the ball out of his hands fast. Some guys sense it before it happens."

When Tagovailoa and Mariota take the field against each other on Sunday at Real Madrid's Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, it will be the first time an NFL game has kicked off in Spain. 

"Very, very honored, and I don't take that very lightly," Mariota said in his weekly press conference on Wednesday. "Tua and myself, we grew up in the middle of the Pacific, far away from here. The fact of the matter is, we get a chance to be a part of this game and it's very special. I don't take that for granted at all. I do enjoy the experience, I do enjoy being away from the country. We're gonna do our best to put out a great product and a great show and I'm excited for the challenge on Sunday. 

Tagovailoa was still in high school when Mariota was putting Saint Louis and Hawai‘i on the map during a stellar career at Oregon. 

"Long story short, I think a lot of people know I looked up to Marcus when I was in high school and he was at Oregon and then when he transitioned, getting drafted to the Tennessee Titans. I was a big fan of him. Still am, just the person that he is outside of the player. Just happy for his success. I know he's been going through ebbs and flows with teams but if you get to know the kind of person he is, I think the playing and whatnot is second."

The matchup between Mariota and Tagovailoa will be the first time two quarterbacks from the same Hawai‘i high school have started a game against each other. On Oct. 19, Tagovailoa's Dolphins lost 31-6 to the Cleveland Browns, led by Mililani's Dillon Gabriel. The Oct. 19 contest was the first in which two starting quarterbacks from Hawai‘i went against each other in an NFL game. 

Sunday's game is already being viewed as a massive victory for Saint Louis and the Hawai‘i football community at large. 

"I'm proud to have graduated from Saint Louis and representing the school. We as locals are proud of where we went to high school, and that's just our thing here in Hawai‘i," Chang said. "Looking at those two guys, just very proud. I think we all get to adopt Marcus and Tua as a state, and I'm proud I was able to just watch them grow into who they were from a young age to where they are now and playing on the biggest stage. 

"It's something that Hawai‘i has to enjoy and get behind and just really be proud of these guys. They inspire so much of the youth and the kids and everybody that came behind them, even the kids in college, to the high schoolers, to the middle schoolers, to the youth now. It's pretty remarkable that these guys are there, and Dillon too. For the last couple weeks, we've had three starting quarterbacks in the NFL from Hawai‘i, and that's pretty unbelievable."

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Tua Tagovailoa Marcus Mariota 111325

<title>Saint Louis beams with pride ahead history-making QB matchup</title>

Former Crusaders Tua Tagovailoa and Marcus Mariota are set to start against each other in Madrid, Spain on Sunday.

Saint Louis beams with pride ahead history-making QB matchup

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 is iconic for its fresh-baked pastries and breads. Established by Roy and Louise Stillwell and Jerry Gibson in 1994, the bakery quickly became known for its high-quality baked goods.

Stillwell’s Bakery & Café recently announced via social media that it is projected to open a second location early next year, according to business managing partner Matt Portilla.

“It will be inside the new Central Pacific Bank across from Target,” he confirms. “We are going to offer breakfast, lunch, coffee, tea and, of course, pastries. We’ll even have a couple new items that will be exclusive to that location.”

The bakery’s cream horns ($4.95 each) are its most popular pastries; mini versions ($3.75 each) are also available. The confections feature puff pastry dough filled with housemade pastry cream, and are covered in fine milk chocolate and powdered sugar.

“Stillwell’s cream horns are a favorite for visitors and locals alike; boxes of them are often seen leaving Maui as a special gift,” Portilla says.

The bakery offers desserts like fresh fruit tarts, chocolate mousse cups, bread pudding, brownies, creme brûlée and apple tarts.

Stillwell’s Bakery & Cafe also offers breakfast, lunch and dinner. Breakfast is served daily from 6:30 to 10:30 a.m.; options range from fried egg sandwiches ($10.95) to the Hapa Boy plate ($12.95), which includes two eggs, two hot cakes and two choices of breakfast meat.

Meanwhile, lunch dishes are served daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Choose from a variety of sandwiches — which come with a side Caesar salad or chips — salads, and noodles. Options include crab cake sandwich ($17.25), Cobb salad ($15.90), Chinese chicken salad ($10.75 half, $15.75 full) and chow fun noodles ($12.95).

The Chinese chicken salad ($10.75 half, $15.75 full), a mix of Romaine, carrots, purple cabbage, cucumber, won ton chips, sesame seeds, freshly cooked chicken and housemade dressing, is a customer favorite. The bakery-cafe is well known for its homemade dressings, according to Portilla, who says Stillwell's raspberry vinaigrette, Japanese vinegar and oil, and Oriental dressings can be purchased in-store. 

The business’s dinner menu is available daily from 4 to 8 p.m., and includes dishes like hot pastrami sandwich ($17.25), meatball sandwich ($17.25) and a build-your-own-pizza option (starting from $12).

Stillwell’s also offers daily specials. During our visit, a spicy pork bulgogi sandwich ($16.85) and mahi mahi fish sandwich were featured. The latter included a grilled egg-battered fish fillet with lettuce, tomato, tartar sauce on a choice of bread. Meanwhile, the bulgogi sandwich featured a torpedo roll stuffed with marinated pork bulgogi, cucumber, carrots and cabbage coleslaw with calamansi crema.

Stillwells managing partner 103125

<title>This iconic Maui bakery is opening a second location</title>

Located in Wailuku, Stillwell’s Bakery & Cafe has been serving its freshly baked pastries to the Maui community since 1994. The bakery and cafe recently announced it’s opening a second location in early 2026.

This iconic Maui bakery is opening a second location

, knew she wanted to specialize in a unique dessert when she first started her business in 2020.

“I’m an immigrant; I came here because of my husband,” says Smith, who is originally from Colombia. “I wanted to do something very unique that is hard to find. I decided to start with alfajores, which is a cookie that comes from South America. It’s originally from Argentina, but it’s found in all of South America — Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil.”

The dessert features two crumbly, shortbread-like cookies sandwiched together with a sweet filling — and for Smith, that’s dulce de leche.

“This (our alfajores) melts in your mouth,” she says. “It’s super soft, and it comes with our dulce de leche, which is the milky caramel.

“Dulce de leche is the main flavor in South America,” she adds. “That’s why pretty much everything I make has dulce de leche. We can make it (alfajores) with different flavors, but our signature is dulce de leche.”

Aloha Alfajores officially opened in June 2020, and Smith rented out various kitchens. Customers often direct message the business on Instagram to order, or they order online.

Since starting her business, the menu has expanded to include dulce de leche brownies — a blend of chocolate, caramel and cheesecake — crème brulees and frescas con cremas. The latter features a combination of strawberries and cream with layers of alfajores.

“They have the cookie crust as the shell, and a little touch of dulce de leche,” Smith says. “We also have our rice pudding, which is a very Latin American dessert; our frescas con cremas has alfajores inside.”

While renting out kitchen spaces, Smith was looking for her own commercial kitchen. She says she started the search a long time ago, but remembers feeling discouraged.

“It got to a point where I was going to give up and sell my business,” she says. “The day I got two people interested in my business, I felt something in my heart … something was telling me not to sell it.”

Smith resumed her hunt for a kitchen space and started looking up possibilities on Facebook Marketplace. That’s when her current space on Mango Avenue in Wahiawa popped up.

“I found two locations — one in town, and this one — and I talked to the guy here,” Smith says. “He was like, ‘Just come and see it,’ and it happened within a week. I was like, ‘OK, if it’s going this way, it’s meant to be.’”

Smith clarifies that the commercial kitchen space is not a café or storefront — yet — but it’s a step in that direction.

“It’s mostly our production place,” she says. “We produce for events, for distribution, and for people that want to come by. Hopefully, if everything goes well and I get more of a budget, I can design it better—I would like to have a little place where people can sit.”

Besides the packaged desserts at her kitchen, Aloha Alfajores is at Ala Moana Center on most Saturdays (Mauka wing second floor, near Target) and her products are distributed at retailers like Mari’s Garden, Taqueria el Ranchero, and Teapresso’s Ewa Beach and Keeaumoku stores.

“We also do shipping nationwide; we have a special box of cookies,” Smith says.

As her business celebrated its five-year milestone and Smith looks ahead to 2026, she says she is hoping to further establish her business’s new kitchen location and expand its distribution locations.

“Our business is very unique; it’s something that’s hard to find somewhere else,” she says. “This is a place where people can come and get something completely different.

“Business owners — or anyone — don’t give up,” she adds. “Keep going and following your dreams, even though it can be hard.”

Kitchen space open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays and Fridays, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays-Thursdays, Saturdays 

Limited parking available in front of the business; street parking also available

Aloha Alfajores business owner 103125

<title>Aloha Alfajores opened a new kitchen space</title>

The business, which started in 2020, officially has its own commercial kitchen space in Wahiawa. Besides its signature alfajores, the biz offers dulce de leche brownies, crème brulee and frescas con cremas.

Aloha Alfajores opened a new kitchen space

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Crime & Courts

The Maui Police Department requested assistance Tuesday in identifying the families of 13 unclaimed bodies currently held at the department’s forensic facility.

The 13 bodies have death dates largely between June and October, although one man died in June 2023. Their names are: Mark Reese, Ken Fujii, Robert Richardson, Luke Wirth, Hey Hall, Ruth Early, Andrea Gordon, Tisse Henriksen, Patric Brock, Alvaro Marin, Walter Leskuski, David Clay and Burnett Akiu.

Anyone with information about their family members is encouraged to call (808) 463-3833.

This had Aloha State Daily wondering: what is the process for dealing with unclaimed bodies? We asked officials on O‘ahu, Maui and Hawai‘i Island about their processes.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The nameless dead"}]

Jeremie Evangelista, acting assistant chief for the Hawai‘i Police Department’s Administrative Services Division, said the police department holds bodies as part of coroner’s inquests: investigations into the circumstances of a death.

“If someone finds a body in a public place, the police obviously gets called because they didn’t die in the care of someone,” Evangelista said. “We have to figure out their identities; we can’t contact next-of-kin if we don’t know who they are.”

This can take time. Officials on all three islands each described flexible schedules for determining corpses’ identities; Phillip Verso, public information officer for the Honolulu Department of the Medical Examiner, told ASD that “there is no specific time limit on how long the Department may hold unclaimed individuals.”

Currently, the DME has 12 unclaimed decedents in its care, Verso said, and the only limit for how long they can be held is the capacity of cold storage. Last year, the department’s morgue had its storage capacity increased from 60 to 140 bodies.

Some bodies can be held for years. MPD’s release this week included in its list of the dead Mark Reese, who died in June 2023 at the age of 81 and has been held ever since.

Tricia-Lee Lum Ho, MPD’s Morgue Operations Clerk, said Reese had been unidentified for quite some time, and was only positively identified recently.

Evangelista said HPD — which currently only has one unclaimed body in storage — will hold bodies in custody “as long as necessary” to find next of kin, which has led to bodies being held for years.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Family matters"}]

When next-of-kin have been identified, it can still take time for them to claim the body. Lum Ho said family members can, understandably, be overwhelmed by the stress of the death of a loved one and preparing for funeral arrangements. In some cases, she said, family members have gotten back to MPD after weeks or months of raising funds for a funeral.

Lum Ho said MPD makes multiple efforts to reach multiple people within a decedent’s family, which itself is time-consuming. Next-of-kin follows an order of precedence, from spouses to adult children to parents and so on down the line.

Some family members may decline to claim a body. In those cases, Lum Ho said bodies can be claimed by non-relatives. She said one body was claimed from the MPD in February by an unrelated woman; in other examples, she said organizations like a church group with a connection to the deceased could claim the body.

Each official emphasized that the process is not to be rushed. Verso said the Department of the Medical Examiner provides “compassionate guidance to families navigating their loss.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Disposal"}]

But sometimes, nobody claims a body at all. MPD’s release this week advised that a body not claimed “in a reasonable amount of time” is cremated.

Lum Ho acknowledged that a “reasonable amount of time” varies case-by-case — in the case of Mark Reese, more than two years has been reasonable.

However, MPD announced in June that it had five unclaimed bodies in storage. None of them were claimed by next-of-kin, Lum Ho said; four months later, none of them were included in MPD’s October list of names.

Evangelista said subsequent handling of corpses is carried out by a contractor — in HPD’s case, Clinical Labs of Hawai‘i.

 that all unclaimed dead human bodies are cremated, with the Department of Human Services paying the cost of the service — or $800, whichever is less — to the licensed crematory contracted for said service.

Said law also notes that county medical examiners have no time limit by which to submit written determinations that a body is unclaimed.

Morgue 16x9

<title>Explainer: What happens to unclaimed bodies at Hawai‘i's morgues</title>

A brief look into what happens to unclaimed bodies in county morgues, stemming from Maui County's call for assistance in tracking down the families of 13 decedents in its care.

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