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Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Now, let's all enjoy watching the viewing of Lady & The Tramp..."}]

Smile 26 6 5

<title>Daily Smile: Friday, June 5, 2026</title>

Now, let's all enjoy watching the viewing of Lady & The Tramp...

Daily Smile: Friday, June 5, 2026

 Now, let&#039;s all enjoy watching the viewing of Lady &amp; The Tramp...

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

Looking back on how their sourdough business — 

 — began, Tyler and Kelly Kimura say everything started when they purchased a manual dough sheeter so they could learn to make croissants.

“We had some baking experience and simply wanted to challenge ourselves,” Tyler says. “At the time, we never imagined we’d eventually open a bakery out of our own home.”

The couple had run a bakery from 2012 to 2017 — before they had kids, according to Kelly, who says she and Tyler liked sourdough because of its simple ingredients.

After a lot of trial and error, the couple reached a point where they were making croissants they were proud of. They would often give their baked goods out to people in the neighborhood, in order to get feedback on their recipes.

Around the same time, they noticed the growing popularity of cottage bakeries on the Mainland.

“That’s when we had our ‘aha’ moment,” Kelly says. “We realized this could become more than just a hobby.

“Ever since our first child was born, we’d been looking for a business we could build together — one that we both enjoyed and that would also give us the flexibility to spend more time at home, and eventually, homeschool our children,” she adds. “It took us a while before we felt confident enough to take the leap.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The business’s name was chosen by the couple’s three daughters."}]

“We gave them a few ideas, but they were set on ‘742’ because those were their ages at the time — 7, 4 and 2,” Kelly says. “The idea actually came from our oldest, and the younger two agreed. After making sure there wasn’t already another Seven4Two Bakery, we decided to roll with it.”

 officially launched last April with its first pick-up day for orders. The business’s opening menu featured croissants, sourdough bread and sourdough dark chocolate chunk cookies.

“Since then, we’ve expanded to include scones, cinnamon rolls and sourdough English muffins,” Tyler says.

The business’s sourdough English muffins ($10 for a bag of four) are the business’s most popular item, according to Tyler.

“They’re thick, fluffy and make a great breakfast sandwich, but they’re just as good toasted with butter and jam,” he says. “If you’re ambitious, try making eggs Benedict with them.”

The business’s assorted croissant boxes (around $18 for four assorted pieces) are also customer favorites. Seven4Two Bakery offers butter, chocolate, ham and cheese, origami and apple origami croissants. The origami ones are inspired by the Kouign Amann (a pastry known for its caramelized sugar crust), according to Kelly. The origami croissant is sprinkled with sugar, folded and baked in a muffin pan to create a flower-like shape.

“They’re buttery, flaky and made from dough that’s folded and layered over multiple days,” she explains.

The apple origami features a sweet apple, brown sugar and cinnamon filling. Kelly notes that the apple origami and chocolate croissants — made with three batons of rich, dark chocolate — are the most popular flavors. She recommends the ham and cheese croissant, which is made with Gruyere, for those who want a savory option.

Customers can also opt for the business’s original sourdough ($10) and cheddar and roasted garlic sourdough ($13). The loaves are known for their soft interior and crust, according to Tyler.

“They have a nice crust, but not the kind that’s going to hurt your jaw,” he says. “By the time they make it to your home, the crust has usually softened just a bit.”

The business’s cinnamon rolls ($18 for four) are swirled with cinnamon and brown sugar, then topped with cream cheese frosting.

“The cinnamon rolls are kind of my passion project,” Kelly says. “We weren’t going to sell it — I just used to make it for people — but people were like, ‘You need to sell them.’”’

Customers can also opt for sourdough dark chocolate chunk cookies (six cookies for $12) — which feature the nutty flavor of browned butter — and sourdough mac nut chocolate chunk cookies (six for $12). Buttermilk scones (six for $18), which are hand-crafted in small batches, come in flavors like blueberry, pumpkin chocolate chip, bacon cheddar, matcha white chocolate and lilikoʻi.

The business is usually open for online pre-orders and pick-ups on Saturdays. Follow the Instagram account for updates; Seven4Two Bakery’s menu and pre-orders are available via 

. Orders usually open on Sunday mornings and close on Wednesday nights, giving the couple enough time to prepare.

“What makes us unique is the story of how we got here,” Kelly says. “We didn’t start out with the goal of opening a bakery. It started as a challenge to see if we could make croissants at home, and now it has grown into a little bakery serving our Pauoa Valley community every Saturday morning.”

Seven4 Two owners 100626

<title>Seven4Two Bakery offers a variety of sourdough pastries</title>

The husband-and-wife owned bakery, located in Pauoa Valley, is usually open for pre-orders online and pick-ups on Saturdays. Customers can choose from sourdough English muffins, breads, croissants, scones and cookies.

Seven4Two Bakery offers a variety of sourdough pastries

[{"type":"text","text":"Practice makes paw-fect!"}]

Smile 26 10 11

<title>Daily Smile: Monday, Oct. 12, 2026</title>

Practice makes paw-fect!

Daily Smile: Monday, Oct. 12, 2026

Ray Tsuchiyama

Columnists

 of this look at childcare in Hawai‘i, I wrote about the part of our childcare system that never shows up in a State government spreadsheet — my 4:30 p.m. pickups as "Jiji" among thousands of grandparents and aunties providing "free kūpuna labor" worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

The next question: Who in the Hawaiʻi State government is actually responsible for overseeing 

Early childhood touches education, health, human services, workforce development, and economic growth. Without a central structure, these responsibilities easily become fragmented across government — one office tracking licensed slots, another administering subsidies, a third running public pre-K, with none of them necessarily talking to each other, let alone to the informal network that fills the gaps everywhere formal systems fall short.

Other states have recognized this coordination problem and responded in strikingly similar ways, even when their local politics and funding mechanisms look vastly different.

New Mexico created a dedicated Early Childhood Education and Care Department and paired it with a 2022 constitutional amendment — approved by over 70% of voters — that redirects a share of the state's Land Grant Permanent Fund into early childhood programs on a permanent, self-sustaining basis. New Mexico also wrote a crucial policy into its eligibility rules: grandparents raising grandchildren can access childcare assistance without meeting standard work or school requirements. That is a state 

 rather than relying on it as free kūpuna labor.

Voters in Multnomah County, Oregon, approved a dedicated income tax on high earners to fund universal preschool, directing funds specifically toward raising early childhood educator wages. The rationale was simple: you cannot expand access to care with a workforce leaving for better-paying jobs elsewhere. Fund the wages first, and the available seats will follow.

Washington, D.C. folded pre-K into its per-pupil public education funding formula, treating early learning as a foundational grade level in the city budget — a decision that helped it achieve the highest early-learning coverage in the nation.

These jurisdictions took different paths — some built cabinet-level agencies, others modified tax codes or school funding formulas. But the broader lesson for Hawaiʻi isn't to copy any single model. It is simpler: Every one of these places decided early childhood was important enough to organize government around, rather than leaving it scattered across disparate agencies.

If early childhood is a top State government priority in Hawaiʻi, it deserves a dedicated agency, a permanent funding mechanism, or at minimum a unified mandate tasked with overseeing the complete system.

Hawaiʻi should seriously consider establishing a Department of Early Childhood.

However, I would strongly advise against starting with another lengthy strategic plan. First, we need to build a comprehensive map.

Hawaiʻi should create a real-time Early Childhood Dashboard that brings the entire ecosystem together. It should tell us: How many keiki are there, and where do they live? Who cares for them during the day? Where are the licensed childcare slots, and where are the geographical deserts? What does care actually cost families relative to local wages? How many parents could return to or advance in the workforce if care were accessible? How much informal care is being provided? And ultimately — are Hawaiʻi's children entering kindergarten ready to learn?

This dashboard would also allow Hawaiʻi to benchmark itself against peer states — not for the sake of comparison, but because New Mexico, Multnomah County, and D.C. all had to answer these same questions before taking action. None of them had perfect baseline data, but they moved forward using the best available numbers. Hawaiʻi does not need absolute precision before starting; it needs enough clarity to stop guessing.

 If Hawaiʻi's childcare affordability is worse than comparable states, we should know. If parental workforce participation is lagging due to coverage gaps, we should know. If specific regions — like Windward Oʻahu or the Neighbor Islands — face acute shortages, the data should reflect it. If a new state initiative works, the numbers should prove it. If it fails, we should pivot.

The objective is not another static government website full of statistics nobody outside an agency reads. The objective is to move the needle for local families.

Only after we understand the full structure of our childcare system should we decide where to invest state resources:

I do not have all the answers yet, and that is the point. We shouldn't select the solution before we accurately measure the problem.

Tomorrow at 4:30 p.m., I will be back in that preschool parking lot. I might be answering an email from a client in New York, and then I will fasten my granddaughter into her car seat.

Her preschool teacher will have done her part. Her parents will do theirs. Jiji will do his.

Hawaiʻi needs to see how all these pieces fit together. Before we decide what to build, what to subsidize, or whom to pay, we should first understand the childcare and early-learning system we already have.

ay Tsuchiyama’s series explores one central question: How does Hawai‘i use the wealth and land it already has to create its next economic future? He can be reached at 

child care costs I Stock 2177795279 16x9

<title>Before we subsidize: Mapping Hawaiʻi’s childcare economy</title>

In the second of a two-part series, ASD columnist Ray Tsuchiyama looks at how other states have taken comprehensive approaches to early childcare. Hawai‘i's first step should be gathering data before rushing to copy what others have done, to know exactly what we need.

Before we subsidize: Mapping Hawaiʻi’s childcare economy

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Government & Politics

Crime & Courts

A federal lawsuit over Maui and Kaua‘i 2024 voter rolls has been partially settled.

, the Virginia nonprofit Public Interest Legal Fund filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Maui and Kaua‘i county clerks — Moana Lutey and Jade K. Fountain-Tanigawa, respectively — arguing that the two had failed to comply with the National Voter Registration Act to make voter records publicly available.

That lawsuit claimed that PILF requested that both clerks release lists of registered voters who submitted ballots in the 2024 elections, as well as reports about the number of undelivered absentee ballots in those same elections.

According to the suit, both clerks claimed they were unable to provide those records, which PILF argued was a violation of the NVRA, which both requires the counties to maintain election records for at least two years and to make those records available for public inspection.

On Oct. 8, PILF announced that the Maui case has been settled, as Lutey has reportedly provided the records PILF had requested.

PILF’s communications director Amanda Fischer could not be reached for comment Friday, but she said in a statement that the settlement is “a victory for Maui voters,” and that the release of the records will help ensure Maui’s voter lists are accurate.

The Kaua‘i component of the suit remains open. At the start of the month, Fountain-Tanigawa submitted her initial disclosures, the critical information and documents she will provide for the case before a formal discovery process. Those disclosures largely will include her email correspondence with PILF earlier this year.

The case is tied to an ongoing case concerning the 2024 election. A co-plaintiff in the case is Hawai‘i Elections Commission member Ralph Cushnie, who has alleged that thousands of mail-in ballots were mishandled during the 2024 elections, and that the state’s Chief Election Officer, Scott Nago, has blocked the commission from meeting since June.

Cushnie’s petition for the Hawai‘i Supreme Court to intervene in the commission’s affairs will go to oral arguments on Oct. 16.

Mail in ballot i Stock 1761900294

<title>Lawsuit over Maui voter records settled, while Kaua‘i suit continues</title>

The Public Interest Legal Fund sued two county clerks after they failed to provide voter records on request.

Lawsuit over Maui voter records settled, while Kaua‘i suit continues

i kicked off the soft launch of its Jamba food truck with its first-ever Free Smoothie Friday on Oct. 9. The truck gave away free small smoothies starting at 10 a.m. to the first 200 guests at Kapolei Regional Park. Individuals could choose from smoothies in the business’s most popular flavors, including orange dream machine, strawberry whirl, the Hawai

The truck will usually feature its most popular smoothies and acai bowls for sale. Customers can choose from acai primo (acai-berry blend with bananas, strawberries, granola, blueberries and honey) and acai dream (acai and froyo bases with bananas, strawberries, granola, blueberries and honey).

The 35-foot-long truck’s design is inspired by bold colors and the artistic energy of Kaka

ako’s murals. The truck design celebrates fresh fruit and Jamba Hawai

“It’s one of the biggest trucks I’ve ever seen,” says Thomas Blasque, Jamba Hawai

i director of operations. “It’s a store on wheels; it’s exciting to get this rolling into the community.”

ahu. Its goal is to host community pop-ups a few times each month and give individuals the chance to enjoy free smoothies.

i truck will officially kick off vending at the Honolulu Pride Parade and festival in Waikīkī on Oct. 17. It will also be at the Swings for Wishes golf tournament in ‘Ewa Beach on Oct. 15, and at the Honolulu Zoo Octo-Bear-Fest on Oct. 24.

The truck’s goal is to emphasize community, and it gives the business another way to connect with individuals and give back, according to Blasque, who notes that it allows Jamba Hawaiʻi to reach people beyond its traditional store locations.

“Really, at the end of the day, we want this to be a billboard of Jamba in Hawaiʻi — how can we be a part of the community? How can we demonstrate that we’re here for the island and for the people?” Blasque says. “Hopefully, the vibe fits the culture, and the culture fits Hawaiʻi. We have a calendar of various pop-up events we’re going to be attending with the truck.”

The next Free Smoothie Friday is in the works for later October (location, date and details are still to be determined). 

Jamba Hawaii truck 100926

<title>Jamba Hawaiʻi just launched a new food truck</title>

Jamba Hawaiʻi kicked off the soft launch of its new Jamba food truck with its first-ever Free Smoothie Friday on Oct. 9. The truck will be traveling around Oʻahu. Its goal is to host community pop-ups a few times each month and give individuals the chance to enjoy free smoothies.

Jamba Hawaiʻi just launched a new food truck

The woman charged with fatally shooting a man in Kailua last month pled “not guilty” to second-degree murder Thursday.

Hilinaikailimakualopali Keeno, 24, appeared in court Thursday for her arraignment on murder and firearm charges after she 

 shot and killed 30-year-old Thomas Malone near the Kailua Fall Festival on Sept. 26.

Members of Malone’s family packed the courtroom, with some holding up photos of the deceased throughout the proceedings. Malone’s father, Mike Malone, declined to speak to reporters, but led a prayer circle with other family members after the hearing concluded.

Keeno herself did not speak during the proceedings, with her attorney, Andrew Strand, issued her plea of not guilty on her behalf.

Strand also requested that the District Court’s decision to hold Keeno without bail be reevaluated, and filed a motion late Wednesday requesting that her previous bail of $1 million be reinstated.

However, Judge Ronald Johnson said that, for the time being, Keeno will not be allowed bail. He said that, given the severity of the charges, Keeno represents a danger to the public, and because a conviction could put Keeno in prison for life, she is also a flight risk.

Johnson added that, based on police accounts of the shooting, Keeno allegedly was carrying a firearm at a public festival even before the fatal altercation, which he said was indicative of her potential danger to the public.

Nonetheless, Johnson said Keeno’s trial judge, Rowena Somerville, may decide to restore Keeno’s bail.

Strand also submitted on Wednesday a request for discovery, asking the Honolulu Police Department to provide communications logs and other records pertinent to how they investigated the shooting.

Among those records Strand requested were phone records of a witness who was named in police records as the person who positively identified Keeno as the shooter. He also requested that witness’ financial records between Sept. 26 and Thursday, to look for any transaction of money between the witness and Malone’s family “in exchange for his false statements to law enforcement.”

Strand’s request also sought Malone’s mother’s complete phone records “regarding her threats to ‘take out’” [Keeno] or otherwise harm [Keeno] in retaliation.”

Johnson scheduled Keeno’s trial for December of this year. Keeno remains in custody at the Women’s Community Correction Center.

Daily Smile: Friday, June 5, 2026

ASD Staff

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Daily Smile: Friday, June 5, 2026

Authors

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