Ti leaves and plumeria flowers are needed to help create lei for service members this weekend for Memorial Day. Girl Scouts Hawaiʻi is hosting its annual Lei of Aloha event, where the materials will be used to make lei that honor the more than 10,000 service members at Hawaiʻi State Veteran’s Cemetery in Kāneʻohe.
On Saturday, May 23, members of the public are invited to join Girl Scouts in creating lei from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. at Windward Mall. Community members can also donate ti leaves and flowers to the cause. Girl Scouts will later bring the lei to the cemetery in Kāneʻohe.
Maggie Hirakawa, a retired sergeant of the Honolulu Police Department, started volunteering with Lei of Aloha at least 10 years ago when her granddaughter, Aiko Hernandez, became a Girl Scout. Hernandez will soon be a junior at Kamehameha Schools Kapālama in August.
“One of the greatest things is that it not only brings the Girl Scouts together who come out and set up, and then start making lei — the community comes by,” Hirakawa said. “But then people that are just in the shopping center — visitors from other states, other countries — they stop by and they want to know what's going on. And they sit down, and they start making lei. They talk to the Girl Scouts that help them, and teen mentors. ... And they're so proud of themselves that they made a lei. They take pictures, and they send a picture back home to show them that they made a lei for a soldier or service member.”
For Hirakawa, the event is also a chance to honor and remember family.
“It's also special to me because my hānai parents are buried there, so we're able to actually go after everything's placed and place a lei on their grave,” she said. “My hānai father was in the Army. My father was in the Navy. … My mother was in the Navy. They met here at Pearl Harbor. And then our best man at our wedding — he passed away from Agent Orange out of Vietnam — but he's buried there, so we're able to put a lei on his grave, too.”
Lei of Aloha started more than a decade ago in 2013. At the time, Marissa Lum of Troop 1018, started the event as a Gold Award Project.
“It brings everybody together,” Hirakawa said. “It's just a wonderful experience.”
It is not too late to help.
“We always need more flowers and more tea leaves,” Hirakawa added. “Because some of the Girl Scouts know how to make ti leaf lei. And we need flowers always, because plumerias when they start being touched, they start to go brown right away, and so we need those.”
Volunteers don’t need to have prior lei-making experience.
“They don't have to come with anything,” she said. “They can just come on over and sit down.”
For more information about Lei of Aloha, go to Girl Scouts of Hawaiʻi. For more information about events happening this weekend, check out Aloha State Daily’s guide to 7 things to do for Memorial Day 2026.
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Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
