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Daily Smile

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<title>Daily Smile: Thursday, July 2, 2026</title>

Probably the worst game of tag ever...

Daily Smile: Thursday, July 2, 2026

[{"type":"text","text":"Target acquired. Initiating stealth-waddle mode....."}]

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<title>Daily Smile: Tuesday, July 14, 2026</title>

Target acquired. Initiating stealth-waddle mode.....

Daily Smile: Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Stephanie Salmons Headshot

Stephanie Salmons

Aloha Spirit

Nearly three years after wildfires destroyed much of Lahaina town, a new three-day celebration will bring more than 100 former residents back.

The inaugural Lahaina Homecoming — set for July 17 to 19 — will welcome 103 former residents home and offer a handful of community events.

It's an initiative of Maui Economic Recovery Commission's Healing Journey Team, coordinated by nonprofit Festivals of Aloha and is sponsored by the Maui County Office of Recovery, Hawaiian Council, Hawai‘i Community Foundation and Hawaiian Airlines, along with other local organizations and private donors, a recent announcement from Maui County noted.

It was created "from deep listening, lived experience and community need," the 

 states. "The idea grew from ongoing healing work with Lahaina families and a shared understanding that coming home — together — is an essential part of recovery."

 ravaged parts of the Valley Isle. One blaze destroyed much of Lahaina and killed more than 100 people.

The homecoming centers on the people, stories, culture and the future of Lahaina, the site says, and is a "space to heal together, to honor what was lost and to invest in what comes next."

“The inaugural Lahaina Homecoming represents a crucial investment in the belief that although many families have been displaced, Lahaina remains their home,” Maui Economic Recovery Commission Chairman Layne Silva said in the announcement. “The event welcomes former residents and the community at large to take part in cultural experiences, storytelling, resource sharing and community-focused programming that honors Lahaina’s rich heritage and strengthens connections among residents, families and supporters as Lahaina continues its recovery.”

Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen told Aloha State Daily last week that he thought the homecoming was a "great idea," and the event was driven by the community's interest. 

For Bissen, the residents returning, many of whom left after the fire, is the coolest part. 

"The whole idea was to let them know your town is vibrant, your town is alive, your town is coming back and come and see it. Come and see your friends and family and reconnect," he says.

According to the announcement, organizers had initially hoped to sponsor airfare for 80 individuals but, "as applications continued to arrive, they found it impossible to turn away so many people with deep roots in Lahaina." Instead, 103 former residents representing 20 families will return for the weekend.

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[{"type":"text","text":"Friday, July 17"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Saturday, July 18"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Sunday, July 19"}]

According to the announcement, complimentary parking will be available at the Lahaina Aquatic Center, with continuous shuttle service to and from Campbell Park each evening. Those who plan to attend are encouraged to carpool and allow extra travel time. A dedicated kūpuna drop-off and pick-up area will be available at the corner of Front and Prison streets.

Additional parking will be available at Lahaina Hongwanji Mission, Waiola Church and Lahaina Baptist Church.

Trilogy Excursions also is offering complimentary community cruises for Homecoming participants.

The homecoming also serves an opportunity for the community to reconnect with the area before Front Street reopens to the public.

County officials told ASD that the county aims to reopen Front Street to through traffic before the third anniversary of the fire.

Currently, Front Street is closed from Papalaua to Dickenson streets, while the portion from Dickenson to Shaw streets is partially open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily., a county spokesperson confirmed in a follow-up email.

Details of the reopening are still being discussed and will be announced soon.

Office of Recovery Administrator John Smith noted that the area is a "kuleana in progress place." 

"We will continue to have construction and limited road closures based on all of the work that's going down there," he told ASD. "But we just finished the railing project, we just finished a paving project on Front Street, and it's just really good timing. So when the festivities are over and after everything's cleaned up, it's going to be the right time to allow traffic on Front Street."

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Lahaina Front Street rainbow 070826

<title>Lahaina homecoming planned; Front Street to reopen in near future</title>

Nearly three years after deadly wildfires destroyed much of the West Maui community, 103 former residents are set to return this weekend  — and the public is invited to help celebrate the community's spirit.

Lahaina homecoming planned; Front Street to reopen in near future

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Crime & Courts

Columnists

On a June afternoon in Liliha, police found a man walking the centerline of North Kuakini Street with blood soaking his white shirt. Police asked the man his name. “I’m Jesus Israel Black I!” he told the officers, according to court documents. “I’m a pedophile. It’s a conspiracy. I’m being framed.” He was not Jesus Israel Black the First. He was Joshua, the son.

An hour later, Joshua’s mother found Jesus, 70, lying bloodied on the floor of their Nalanui Street apartment. He was taken to a hospital and died there that night. The son had taken his father’s name and his father’s imagined guilt in the same breath.

It was the third case of its kind on Oʻahu in the past year. Last June, London Opendack was charged with attacking his mother and father with a hammer in their Waikīkī apartment. Court records show he had 

 to stand trial in earlier cases, and twice released. In December, Micah Auna was charged with murder. Police had found his mother’s body at the foot of the stairs in her Hawaiʻi Kai home.

Two of the three men reached for the same story. Auna 

 his mother had molested him and his cousin, so he “pushed” her. Black wore his father’s name and confessed his father’s imagined crime in one sentence. And on Hawaiʻi Island in May, Jacob Baker was charged with killing three elderly men — one of whom had let him harvest coconuts from his land. At one scene, police found “Pedofilio” written on a piece of scrap wood.

Opendack is the exception. His social media posts, still online, show a mind fixated not on predators but on mathematical patterns — number theory as private revelation. The fixation was not new. In a 2022 petition for a restraining order, an ex-girlfriend described finding a note in her driveway that looked like a math proof. On closer inspection it was math symbols arranged into nonsense. His erratic speech, she wrote, pointed to a severe psychological disorder.

 her son had schizophrenia. He had stopped taking his medication earlier in the year and used medical cannabis instead.

A disturbed mind grabs whatever story its culture keeps nearest at hand. A generation ago, the paranoid man heard the CIA in his fillings. Today’s troubled young man, more often than not, finds a predator in his own house.

The fear is not irrational in itself — child predation is real, and our alarm about it is warranted. That is exactly why it has become the costume worn by delusion. Court records note that Jesus Black had ten prior convictions, and none of them were for anything like what his son alleged.

Scripture treats honor of parents as more than good manners. It is the first commandment, Paul observes, that carries a promise: honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land. The promise is civic, not merely personal. A society in which honor flows toward age is a society where the old die in their beds. Leviticus extends the same fabric past the household: rise before the gray head, honor the face of an old man. Baker’s alleged victims were not his kin. They were men old enough to be his father, living quietly in Puna.

The Mosaic penalty for striking a parent was death. That severity measures the weight of the offense against the created order. It does not tell a judge what to do with these particular men. The same tradition that gave us Exodus spent centuries separating the gravity of an act from the capacity of the actor.

One of these men was twice found unfit for trial, and twice released. Years later, he allegedly took a hammer to his parents. That raises a policy question for the state.

But the deeper repair happens where the state cannot reach: fathers present in homes, and congregations that do not send their disturbed young men out to the sidewalk. It depends on families that treat the commandment as livable rather than quaint.

None of us will do what these men stand accused of. But the commandment was not written for monsters. It was written for ordinary homes. The commandment covers the way we approach the father who repeats himself, the teacher talked over in class, the kūpuna left to manage alone. Honor frays at the small points long before it tears at the large ones. The extreme cases shock us because some of the old fabric still holds.

We can pray that God’s will be done and that young men would come to know this commandment. We still must do the part of the work assigned to us.

The commandment comes with a promise. Long days in the land are offered to us, if we obey.

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Opendack upscaled

<title>Hawaiʻi attacks on parents: What the Liliha, Hawaiʻi Kai and Waikīkī cases share</title>

A blood-soaked man stood in the middle of a Liliha street and answered police with his father’s name. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on three attacks on parents in a single year — and the commandment written for ordinary homes.

Hawaiʻi attacks on parents: What the Liliha, Hawaiʻi Kai and Waikīkī cases share

Business & Tourism

A new center launched earlier this year by Bank of Hawai‘i aims to help business owners plan for growth, transition and the future.

The Center for Family Business & Entrepreneurs was created for family-owned and closely-held businesses, an announcement from BOH noted.

"Bank of Hawai‘i created the Center for Family Business and Entrepreneurs, as we've really come to discover that for business owners, particularly family business owners and our closely held business owners, at some point in their business-owning journey, their decisions become deeply interconnected for both the business, the family, their personal wealth," CFBE Director Agatha Viernes-LeGros told Aloha State Daily in June. "We really see that there's a need to support these business owners as they evaluate different milestones on their journey — particularly as they look toward succession and exit of their business."

The center formally launched in April, but Viernes-LeGros says the idea has been percolating for much longer.

"I give credit to our executives here at Bank of Hawai‘i for recognizing that our business owners have needs outside from core banking services," she says. "They have needs as it relates to their business succession and personal wealth strategy and planning, so it's taken a bit to get to this point. ... It's been probably a year-and-a-half, maybe even almost [a] two-year journey, and that's really been because we wanted to be thoughtful about how we're sharing with our community what we're doing."

Viernes-LeGros says CFBE aims to provide education, advice and hands-on execution of planning services to clients in a confidential manner, bringing together expertise in commercial banking with what the bank does in the wealth management space, "to really provide these comprehensive and connective services to our business-owning community."

The center finds that as clients start to evaluate major decisions, whether it's continuing to reinvest in their business or stepping away, they often times don't know how to do so, she told ASD.

"We find these business owners, they're the ones that built their business up from the ground up, and as much as they're skilled at running their business, they're not skilled at what comes next," Viernes-LeGros says. "... You oftentimes hear businesses closing their doors, and that's unfortunately becoming an all-too-common story these days, and that could be because they may not have a named or a known successor. We see that family businesses, they've done a great job of building wealth — not just for their own families, but also in their communities, reinvesting in their communities — and as their own children grow up, they find that they've got other interests, start other careers and they don't really have this ability to come back and run the family business. That leaves business owners with not really understanding what's the next step for them."

CFBE has resources to help those business owners look at and evaluate what options are available.

, research shows that as much as 70% or more of their personal wealth is tied up in their companies, which makes decisions about succession, transition and continuity "deeply personal as well as financial."

When asked what these business owners should know about or be mindful of during the succession planning process, Viernes-LeGros says the biggest pitfall they see business owners fall into is waiting until the last minute.

"I think that is a critical aspect of thinking through one's succession and transition is that you really should be doing it well in advance," she told ASD. "We're talking even up to years in advance of when you really intend on exiting a business because there's certain tax strategies, changes to the way your business is organized, gifting strategies ... that require planning in advance to make sure you can best take advantage of the different tax benefits out there. If they wait to the last minute and they make these changes say a year, six months out from when they plan to exit their business, they may not be able to get the full benefit of the tax strategies that they're trying to implement."

Additionally, Viernes-LeGros says it can sometimes take years to empower a successor and remove owner dependency from a business.

"That's another area where we can see some pitfalls for business owners as they think about exiting, is they're so critical to the day-to-day ... but if they get all of their ideas, get the secret sauce down on paper, so to speak, maybe locked away, but out of their head and onto paper, that really helps for a business to succeed and continue on, and well into the future."

Want to learn more? You can get more info at the 

Viernes Le Gros Agatha BOH 16x9

<title>Center for Family Business & Entrepreneurs helps businesses plan for growth, transition</title>

The new center was launched earlier this year by Bank of Hawai‘i, created for family-owned and closely-held businesses. CFBE Director Agatha Viernes-LeGros told Aloha State Daily that the center aims to provide education, advice and hands-on execution of planning services to clients in a confidential manner.

Center for Family Business & Entrepreneurs helps businesses plan for growth, transition

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 vividly remembers helping his mom in the kitchen while he was growing up.

“She was always eager to teach us and include us in the process, whether it was cooking or baking,” he says. “She loved preparing all of my brother’s and my favorite dishes. I became her little ‘food critic,’ always excited to taste whatever new creation she came up with.”

Lee’s passion for trying new foods — both locally and while traveling to new countries — continued as he got older. His expanding palate led him to take classes at Kapiʻolani Community College’s culinary program, and eventually work at Tokoname Sushi Bar and Restaurant in Kailua.

Howdeshell, gave me the opportunity to become head chef at his restaurant,” Lee says. “My mentor, Harry Nakashima — now head chef at Gyotaku — trained me meticulously during my time there, and I learned so much under his guidance. To this day, I continue to seek his advice and wisdom.”

After seeing many successful small pop-ups at local farmers markets, Lee became curious about starting his own business. He recalls spending hours researching and talking to other small business owners before finally deciding to launch Travie’s Patties.

The biz, which specializes in smashburgers, was inspired by one of Lee’s favorite foods.

“[I wanted] to build something that combined bold flavors with a fun, customizable concept,” he says. “Smashburgers gave me the freedom to showcase my favorite flavor combinations, and experiment with unique sauces and toppings.”

Travie’s Patties celebrated its grand opening at Village Night Market in August. The business model represents speed, affordability and quality, according to Lee.

“I wanted Travie’s Patties to be a place where customers can get a hot, made-to-order smashburger without the long wait or high price tag,” he says. “By keeping our prices fair and our flavors fresh, we’ve built a loyal customer base that trusts and enjoys what we do."

Since family members and friends call him “Trav,” coming up with a business name was fun for Lee.

“Every business needs a name people can remember,” he says. “When we started brainstorming burger-related names, ‘Travie’s Patties’ just stuck. It’s fun, catchy and easy to remember.”

Lee remembers experimenting with recipes and gathering food taste testers to perfect his signature burgers and sauces. He designed the business’s menu to be simple, but packed with flavor; its main features include Chimmy ($9 single, $12 double) and the McTravie ($9 single, $12 double).

Both burgers start with a homemade ground sirloin patty mix, grilled onions, a slice of American cheese and crispy cheese crisp atop soft, garlic-buttered potato buns. Customers can add lettuce and tomato at no extra charge, according to Lee.

“We are proud to use locally sourced ingredients from D.Otani Produce,” he says. “The Chimmy comes with our housemade chimichurri aioli, which has a little garlicky, spicy kick. The McTravie features our housemade classic burger sauce with your choice of homemade regular or spicy pickles.”

The biz also offers shoestring fries ($4) and tater tots ($4), which both come with ketchup and the business’s signature chimichurri aioli.

The business recently added a dirty drinks section, which includes dirty sodas, to its menu. A dirty soda is a non-alcoholic drink, which is made “dirty” by being mixed with flavored purees, juices, syrups or cream, according to Lee.

Popular options include The Landshark ($7) — a combo of Sprite, blue raspberry, strawberry puree and gummy sharks — and The Girly ($9). The latter features a pink slush Alani Nu energy drink base with strawberry puree, cream and cold foam.

“The Dirty Alani Nu ($9) uses the energy drink base, then is built the same way (with flavored syrups and purees),” Lee explains. “Lilo’s iced tea ($6) is our take on the famous local-style iced tea, for those wanting a refreshing option.”

The biz loves to celebrate its customers, according to Lee, who says they started an interactive weekly discount called “Player of the Week.” Before each event, the biz announces its featured “player.” Customers then receive a sports player card with a letter and a number as their order placeholder instead of a ticket. If their card matches the business’s player of the week at checkout, the customers get a discount.

“People love it so much that some even try to buy their player cards to keep as souvenirs,” Lee says. “It’s become a fun and unexpected way to connect with our customers while they wait for their food.”

Stay updated with the business by following Travie’s Patties on 

. The biz is scheduled to be at Taste of Aloha Night Market — which is every second Saturday of the month — for the rest of the year. You can also find the biz at various local farmers markets and upcoming holiday craft fairs, the Village Night Market at Pealridge Center on Nov. 15 and 808 Craft and Gift Holiday Craft Fair on Dec. 6.

The biz also offers catering for private events and fundraisers.

“I want to say a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to all our customers — new and returning — as well as our close friends and family, who volunteer their time to help run our pop-ups,” Lee says. “Your support means the world to us. I’m humbled by how many people want to see us succeed. That motivation keeps me pushing forward every single day.”

Travies Patties green sauce burger 110225

<title>Travie’s Patties pop-up offers fun, flavorful smashburgers</title>

The biz celebrated its grand opening in August, and can be found at a variety of night markets and seasonal craft fairs across Oʻahu. The biz also recently added non-alcoholic dirty sodas to its menu.

Daily Smile: Thursday, July 2, 2026

ASD Staff

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Daily Smile: Thursday, July 2, 2026

Authors

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