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ASD Staff

Daily Smile

This is Hunter. He came very close to having an entire thought. Ended up being a false alarm...

Smile 26 8 8

<title>Daily Smile: Saturday, Aug. 8, 2026</title>

Daily Smile: Saturday, Aug. 8, 2026

 This is Hunter. He came very close to having an entire thought. Ended up being a false alarm...

Peter Adler without coat 2022 1011447 copy Large

Peter S. Adler, PhD

Government & Politics

Columnists

Hawai‘i needs leaders who can identify our most persistent problems, set clear priorities, and measure whether their decisions are producing results. The

 is one tool for doing just that: a free and publicly accessible resource my colleagues and I have developed and continually curate.

The dashboard places Hawai‘i in a national context and shows where our state stands on 27 measures of affordability, health, safety, education, and the economy. This tool is driven solely by data — not opinions — and gives public officials, candidates and citizens a common starting point for discussing what deserves attention.

Road quality illustrates how the Dashboard can turn a broad public concern into a measurable policy challenge. The International Roughness Index measures 

, and Hawaiʻi is in the lowest tier nationally (47 of 50), with 15 percent of Hawai‘i’s roads rated in poor condition in 2024 — about 1 in every 6 miles of public roads. This metric has worsened since 2013, when Hawai‘i was ranked 45 out of 50.

Roads are only one example, and it is good to see that Hawai‘i is not below par in every category. While there is room for improvement, we score better than many states on measures such as incidence of violent crime, food security, and household broadband access. Nonetheless, data on the dashboard suggest that Hawai‘i certainly needs to make gains with homelessness, property crime, and the cost of energy. Taken together, the Hawai‘i Dashboard offers a clear list of pertinent issues for leaders to champion and provides a way for the public to track results objectively.

Measurement alone, however, does not identify leadership. A worthy leader must decide which problems deserve priority, build support for difficult choices, manage competing risks, and remain accountable for the results.

Not everyone is cut out to lead others, but if you are an elected or appointed official, run the local canoe club, or manage a sales team in your company, you are a leader — and you often must do contradictory things. You need to champion your organization’s purpose, implement strategies, manage financial risks, handle crises, give life to products and services, and you need to inspire, hire, and fire people.

Steve Jobs put it this way. “If you want to make everyone happy, don’t be a leader. Sell ice cream.”

Good research tells us that America’s top CEOs generally pilot their companies in one of five distinct ways. Some focus on strategy and long-term horizons; others delegate strategy to business-unit heads. Some concentrate on technical expertise and continuous innovation, while still others emphasize financial controls, return on investment, and compliance. A fifth approach shapes turnarounds, often in the face of oblivion but sometimes for transformational expansion.

These approaches offer useful lessons for public institutions, even though government is not a corporation and citizens are not shareholders. Public officials must nonetheless choose priorities, manage risk, navigate crises, build coalitions, and deliver results that the people they serve can examine.

Those are also the standards voters should apply when evaluating candidates and the officials they elect. In Hawai‘i, the Dashboard can help candidates identify priorities and give voters a way to assess whether elected officials are making progress. It offers a common set of indicators for identifying problems, establishing priorities, and asking whether public action is producing measurable improvement.

The point is not to reward officials for choosing fashionable issues or announcing ambitious goals. Leadership success in the public and private sectors alike comes down to tackling big problems, and it is fair to evaluate leaders by how well they address the issues they choose to take on. Whether the concern is tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz or lousy local roads, we voters judge politicians by what they did or did not set out to accomplish, and how well they performed.

Results, however, are not enough; one additional factor is essential: integrity. Honor, reliability, and truthfulness mean doing the right thing for the right reasons, even when no one is watching. In the end, integrity comes down to a simple, three-part test of reasonable consistency: what a leader thinks, what he or she says publicly, and what a leader does.

This test does not demand perfect consistency. Circumstances change, new troubles arise, and leaders must sometimes revise their plans. What matters is whether their thinking, public statements, and actions remain reasonably aligned.  

 is an extremely important expectation since all leadership is political, and no leader is perfect; we need to be tolerant of how challenging leadership really is. Jimmy Carter was a man of great integrity but his downfall arose with the energy, economic, and Iran crises of the late 1970s. That era still echoes, and we now desperately need leaders who can move through the current divisiveness and endless dithering.

There are models for such: Churchill’s great strength in WWII was fervor and boldness; he once opined that leadership is just moving from failure to failure with enthusiasm. Gandhi had a fierce moral fiber developed in South Africa when he was subjected to narrow-minded prejudice, but later applied what he learned to achieve India’s independence. Nelson Mandela emerged from decades in prison, deftly avoided a civil war, and helped end South Africa’s official apartheid policies.

Over the coming months, my colleagues and I will highlight key observations surfaced by the Dashboard and share our analyses with you here. Perhaps this will help make sense of difficult days.  With the midterms coming up, we have an opportunity to rethink what we want from our leaders. It’s time to be bold. We are all in it together. And for anyone who wants to see where Hawai‘i stands, how we are changing, and which challenges deserve our attention, the Hawai‘i Dashboard offers a useful place to start.

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Hawaii state capitol from the south east 16x9

<title>The breakthrough that Hawai‘i needs: Measuring what leaders do</title>

It’s time for a change. Leadership is more than charisma or slogans; it requires choosing real problems and acting with enough integrity and reasonableness that the public can judge results fairly. ASD introduces a new data-driven opinion column to help readers understand what works in Hawai‘i, what doesn't, and how we stack up against other states.

The breakthrough that Hawai‘i needs: Measuring what leaders do

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

As he enters his fifth season overseeing linebackers for the University of Hawai‘i football team, associate head Chris Brown believes his position group is in a great spot. 

The "Lion's Den," as Brown calls his unit, is set to start a pair of seniors in Wynden Ho‘ohuli and Jamih Otis. Ho‘ohuli will play middle linebacker, while Otis, just eight and a half months removed from a torn ACL, is set to roam the field at the outside linebacker spot. Led by the leadership in his seniors and the talent behind them, Brown says the "Lion's Den" is the deepest it's ever been. 

"I'm very, very impressed with 'the Lions'," Brown told Aloha State Daily following a recent practice. "It's probably the most talented squad I've ever had. The problem now is I got about seven guys I can play. They all have something special about them. They all play with with grit, toughness, and they're really, really smart. As of right now, man, it's probably the best room I've ever had."

Even though Brown has penciled in the group's starters ahead of its Aug. 29 opener at Stanford, competition in the "Lion's Den" continues to intensify. 

For the past year, Aisiah "Scoob" Paogofie has done his best to force Brown's hand. Paogofie, a 2025 Campbell graduate, redshirted in his true freshman season with the Rainbow Warriors. He showed flashes of his potential on the scout team, but in spring and fall practices, he's continued to turn heads with his speed, physicality and intensity. During live reps in recent practices, multiple coaches were seen praising him for his instincts off the ball, as well. 

"Scoob's probably the most talented guy I got," Brown said. 

"He has that kind of skill set that he can do anything. Last year, we put him on scout team as the running back, and he looked like a natural, like he's been doing it for 10 years. But he has that ability and speed to play safety. He's just so savvy of where the ball is going to go, and then the ability to bend and get off of blocks. He just knows where the ball is going to go, and his speed is different than the rest."

Brown compared Paogofie to his uncle, former Wai‘anae High School star of the 1990s, Chris Paogofie. It's no wonder that Scoob Paogofie wears the same No. 31 his uncle did for the Seariders. 

Additionally, Brown says he sees bits of former UH linebacker Darius Muasau in Scoob Paogofie. Muasau is currently entering his third NFL season with the New York Giants. 

Listed at 6-foot-1 and 220 pounds, Paogofie appears to still be growing into his wiry frame. Bulking into a linebacker's body's has gone according to a plan hatched from when Brown recruited Paogofie out of high school, back when the Campbell safety was less than 200 pounds. 

"When I recruited him, I knew he was a safety in high school," Brown recalled. "But I looked at how big his bottom half was, and I said, 'This kid is going to get to 215, 220 really easy.' So, he'll be able to play in the box. Maybe not the tallest guy, but just the ability to find the ball over and over and over. I'm really, really excited about his future. I need to play him this year, and he's kind of forced my hand to make him play, and he's definitely gonna play a lot of snaps this season."

Aisiah Paogofie was born in Minnesota, which is where his family relocated to from Samoa at the time. After moving to O‘ahu as a preschooler, he calls the Islands home. The nickname "Scoob" stuck when a Campbell teammate believed he drew a resemblance to Scooby-Doo, in addition to the fact that he was a "dog" on the field. 

Hearing the praise thrown at him from his coaches, specifically Brown, means a lot to Paogofie as he looks to earn playing time. At the same time, he knows he's far from a finished product. 

Just living up to the 'Lion's Den' is a lot, but it's also really cool to be a part of," Paogofie said. 

"I think camp is going really good for me, but there's little tweaks I gotta work on."

As much as he itched to play last season, 

Paogofie looks back at his redshirt year as a valuable one. If not for what he learned watching from the sidelines in 2025, perhaps he wouldn't be the same player Brown and the rest of the coaching staff are eager to fully unleash in 2026. 

"I think it helped me understand [the game] more," 

"Coming in as a freshman, I came around this time, so I really didn't have that much experience as the spring guys had. Just taking that year to understand how the program works and the family that they have over here. 

I'm really excited for this team, to be honest, because we're all hungry."

Aisiah "Scoob" Paogofie

<title>Aisiah 'Scoob' Paogofie emerges as potential impact player for Hawai‘i football</title>

Paogofie, a second year linebacker out of Campbell, has turned heads so far during preseason training camp for the Rainbow Warriors.

Aisiah 'Scoob' Paogofie emerges as potential impact player for Hawai‘i football

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

Business & Tourism

, previously located in Kaimukī, now has a new home.

Business owner Kanako Kiyabu says she has been looking for a new space for her business for more than a year.

“We really loved being part of the Kaimukī community,” she says. “As our business continued to grow, we needed a larger kitchen to keep up with production. We spent about a year looking for the right space, and we’re so happy we finally find our new location.”

The business had been located in Kaimukī for about six years, according to Kiyabu.

“It (the business) all started when I made my daughter’s first birthday cake,” she says. “After that, friends and family began asking me to make cakes for their special occasions, and my business grew, little by little.”

While her business stemmed from making cakes, Kiyabu says the business's name “We Heart Cake Company” had a deeper meaning.

“I didn’t want it to be just about me making cakes,” she says. “I wanted it to be about our team, our customers and our community. We create happiness together. The heart (symbol in our name) is simple, cute and something everyone recognizes. But to me, it also represents love, kindness, care and the spirit of Aloha.”

We Heart Cake Co. closed its doors in Kaimukī at the end of May and soft opened in its new space in mid-June. The dessert shop is now located on South King Street; the entrance to the parking lot is on Liona Street.

“We have more space to work efficiently, and our customers have been so warm and welcoming,” Kiyabu says. “We’re happy to be part of this community. Our new location has a much-larger kitchen, which allows us to make more products, while maintaining the quality we care about.

“The name ‘We Heart Cake Company’ reminds us that everything we make is created with love and care,” she adds. “We truly put our hearts into every product we make.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Having more customer parking is another benefit of the new location."}]

“Customers can park right in front of our store for up to 30 minutes when they’re picking up an order from We Heart Cake Company,” Kiyabu says. “It makes pick-up much more convenient and stress-free.”

The business is popular for its cakes, but also offers cake pops, cupcakes, mini meringue cookies and butter mochi.

Its lava puffs ($4.95 each or $4 with a purchase of more than four) are a new dessert now available at the store, according to Kiyabu.

“One of our most popular products right now is our lava puff,” Kiyabu says. “What makes it special is the crispy top and the smooth, melt-in-your-mouth cream filling. We also offer unique flavors that you won’t find everywhere, like red velvet and ube.”

The business’s butter mochi is also a newer treat. We Heart Cake Co.’s butter mochi and daifuku (mochi with a filling, often red bean paste) are both made using high-quality mochiko flour imported from Asia, according to Kiyabu.

“Being Japanese, I’ve always loved traditional Japanese sweets,” Kiyabu says. “In Hawai

i, I became fascinated by butter mochi because it’s such a wonderful combination of Japanese mochi culture and Hawaiʻi’s local culture.”

Customers can now find We Heart Cake Co.’s butter mochi — available in flavors like original, peanut butter and coconut — in 7-Eleven stores, Times Supermarkets and at Aloha Gas stations.

We Heart Cake Co. is officially celebrating its grand opening this Saturday, Aug. 8 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. During this time, the business will be giving away free cake pops to the first 102 customers, according to Kiyabu.

“We wouldn’t be here without the support of Hawai

i’s local community,” Kiyabu says. “Because of your support, we’ve been able to grow and continue doing what we love. We Heart Cake Company exists because of all of you (our customers), and we’re truly grateful.”

Open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays, closed Sundays

We Heart Cake Co business owner 080526

<title>We Heart Cake Co. has a new Honolulu store</title>

The dessert shop — which used to be in Kaimukī — is now open in McCully. The biz is celebrating its grand opening on Saturday, Aug. 8, with free cake pops for the first 102 customers from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

We Heart Cake Co. has a new Honolulu store

Katie Helland Headshot

Katie Helland

Arts & Entertainment

In late June, Waikīkī Beach Marriott Resort & Spa recently opened its ʻOhana Entertainment Center, a 6,000-square-foot space that includes bowling, virtual reality attractions, sports simulators and more than 60 arcade games.

The space, which is located near the lobby, is open to resort guests, visitors staying at other places in Waikīkī and 

Since the venue opened recently, data on visitation trends was not immediately available, Mark Weatherill, general manager of Waikīkī Beach Marriott Resort & Spa, told Aloha State Daily via email.

“What we are seeing is a healthy mix of resort guests, island visitors and local residents, which is exactly the outcome we were hoping for when the project was envisioned,” he said.

Representatives of the resort declined to comment on the cost of the project. It was developed in partnership with Family Entertainment Group.

Weatherill considers the bowling lanes his favorite part of the center, he said.

“While the virtual reality attractions and arcade games are incredibly popular, bowling has a unique way of bringing people together,” Weatherill shared via email. “Whether it's grandparents, parents, teenagers or younger children, everyone can participate. Every time I walk through the venue, I see families laughing, cheering each other on and creating memorable experiences together. That really captures the spirit of ʻohana and what we hoped to achieve when we created the entertainment center.”

Prior to becoming an entertainment center, the area included administrative and back-of-house space.

“The planning, design and development process began approximately a year before the official opening, with our teams working closely with Family Entertainment Group to bring the vision to life,” Weatherill told ASD.

Waikīkī Beach Marriott Resort & Spa spans more than five acres and features more than 1,300 guest rooms and suites, plus a one-acre pool and cabana deck with panoramic ocean views.

“The inspiration was simple, in that we wanted to create a place where families, friends and groups could come together and create lasting memories,” he wrote. “Today's travelers are looking for more than just accommodations; they're seeking shared experiences, and we saw an opportunity to add a unique indoor attraction that could be enjoyed by both our resort guests and the local community.”

ʻOhana Entertainment Center

<title>Waikīkī resort opens entertainment center</title>

Family bowling is possible in Waikīkī at this entertainment center, which opened in June. The 6,000-square-foot space also includes more than 60 arcade games.

Waikīkī resort opens entertainment center

Christinapic2

Christina O'Connor

Crime & Courts

Shortly after their son, Aidan Dungan, first went missing on Maui in 2019, Kaua‘i couple Laurie and Sam Dungan got a call from a woman offering to help with whatever they needed.

“She called to introduce herself and said 'I’m here if you need me,'” recalled Aidan’s mother Laurie, a teacher at Kaua‘i High School.

The Dungans quickly realized that it was more than just kind words; the woman really meant it.

“And then she just started doing everything in her power to find out what happened,” Laurie said. “She’s an angel.”

The woman on the other end of the line was Kimberlyn Scott, the mother of Carly Scott — better known by her nickname, Charli, a Maui woman who disappeared in 2014 when she was five months pregnant and whose ex-boyfriend was later convicted of her murder.

In the 12 years since her daughter’s death, Kimberlyn has become a tireless force dedicated to helping victims and their families through legislative advocacy, raising awareness about missing persons cases, and assisting families of the missing in on-the-ground searches on Maui — all as a volunteer.

Kimberlyn told Aloha State Daily that she never intentionally set out to do this work. Instead, she sees it as a natural progression of what she’s been through.

“It’s not like I woke up one morning and said I’m going to start doing all of this. … All of these things just organically meant to have me doing what I was doing,” she said. “There was kind of no way around it.”

In the years before Charli’s murder, Kimberlyn said that hers was a normal family — blended and large, but normal.

Kimberlyn initially moved to Hawai‘i as a kid with her parents from California and was raised between Hawai‘i Island and O‘ahu. They eventually returned to the Mainland, but she said she “never got Hawai‘i out of my system” and she later settled on Maui as an adult with her daughters, including Charli, who was a teenager when they made the move. When she married her husband, Johnny, together they had eight girls.

Kimberlyn was a self-described “neighborhood mom” devoted to taking care of her bustling household.

By early 2014, her two youngest girls were teenagers, while the rest were grown and out of the house. Charli was 27, holding down three jobs — at a salon, an arts center, and at a flower shop where she worked with Kimberlyn — as she prepared to become a first-time mom.

Kimberlyn said Charli was excited for the arrival of her baby boy, Joshua.

“She was thrilled, absolutely thrilled — she always wanted to be a mama,” Kimberlyn said.

One of the middle children in the large family, Charli, by her mother’s account, was warm, caring, and responsible — so responsible, in fact, that Kimberlyn often told Charli to look after her sister growing up, even though her sister was the older one.

“Charli was so stable and so reliable and just down to earth,

Things weren’t always easy — the family had its ups and downs, and relationships could be strained at times — but looking back, Kimberlyn said, life was simple in a way she didn’t realize at the time.

That simplicity was shattered on a Sunday evening, Feb. 9, 2014, after Charli left a family birthday celebration for one of her sisters.

When no one could get in touch with Charli the next day, Kimberlyn reported her missing.

A few days into the search, Charli’s burned vehicle was found near a remote surf spot, according to court records and reporting at the time, followed by clothing and other items belonging to Charli, and, finally, bone fragments. With that evidence, Maui police reclassified her disappearance from a missing persons case to a homicide investigation, and in July 2014, Charli’s ex-boyfriend, Steven Capobianco — the father of her unborn child and the last known person to see her — was indicted on a second-degree murder charge for her death.

Capobianco pleaded not guilty — he admitted he saw Charli on the night she disappeared, but claimed he called her for a ride to get his truck after it broke down near the Ke‘anae area and that he last saw her driving behind him on the Hāna Highway.

In 2016, after a trial that stretched on for several months, a jury found Capobianco guilty of Charli’s murder, as well as an arson charge for burning her vehicle in an attempt to cover up the crime. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The first time Kimberlyn got involved in another missing persons case was just a year after Charli’s death, in 2015, when a local man left his home one night and never returned. Volunteer organization Maui Search and Rescue coordinated a search, and Kimberlyn joined in on the effort. She was tasked with bringing food and water to the volunteers, and when she showed up with the supplies, organizers asked her to try to gather more information from the man’s family.

“They told me the family seemed really reluctant to answer [the questionnaire], maybe you can try,” Kimberlyn recalled. “And I was like sure, I’ll go try.”

The family recognized Kimberlyn — they knew she was Charli’s mother, and that opened up the conversation. She also had a sense of how to talk to them and what questions to ask.

The man was never found, but the experience made Kimberlyn realize her unique value in this type of scenario.

“People trusted me because I was Charli's mama. So they would tell me things they wouldn't tell other people,” she said. “It just felt like such a natural fit, like I was meant to be there.”

Kimberlyn, of course, knows the precise kind of pain that comes with having a missing loved one.

Immediately after Charli went missing, Kimberlyn and her family knew something was wrong — it was extremely out of the ordinary for Charli not to be in contact with her mother or sisters — but they clung to the hope that maybe she had just gotten in an accident and was out there somewhere. In those early days, Kimberlyn drove back and forth on the Hāna Highway, pulling over every 50 feet to call Charli’s name and peer into ravines for signs that her car may have gone off the road. Via social media, the family organized volunteer search parties that scoured the area.

Though Charli’s full remains have never been found, clothing with her blood on it, her skirt with nearly 20 puncture marks, and parts of her body — including her jawbone, hair, and fingertips — were uncovered within days of her disappearance, enough evidence to indicate that Charli was dead.

It wasn’t the answer anyone wanted, but at least it was an answer, Kimberlyn believes today.

“Because we found those things, we knew Charli was deceased. When I compare that to the situation that families who don’t know are in, it’s a pretty bizarre statement to say, but I feel lucky to know that my daughter is dead,” she said. “When I’m working with other families … I’ve felt like I am the sole survivor of a plane crash, it’s that kind of guilt, because I have answers and they don’t.”

Kimberlyn said she also is grateful for the community — hundreds showed up to help search for Charli, and the case garnered ample media attention locally and even nationally.

“We got so much help from the community and from the press,” Kimberlyn said. “There were so many people helping us. … And that doesn’t happen in every case.”

‘She was there for just anything we needed’

Over the years, Kimberlyn has helped bring attention to other missing persons cases by hanging flyers and using the original Find Charli Scott Facebook page — which has more than 8,300 followers — to raise awareness.

She’s also worked directly with dozens of families of the missing, assisting in everything from helping them navigate communication with police, to coordinating travel logistics for families coming to Maui to look for loved ones, to participating in on-the-ground search efforts. She also talks to family members to see if she can uncover any new information or identify gaps in the case.

“I let them know what information they need to have. I make sure that the families know to tell [the police] about specific things, like mental health issues,” she said. “I get them set up so that it’s easier for the police, too.”

In 2022, Dave Wyatt got a call that his 37-year-old son, Joey Wyatt, never returned home after a camping trip. Dave and his daughter immediately flew to Maui from their home on the East Coast to help with the search.

It was overwhelming — not only emotionally, but they were unfamiliar with the Islands and had no local contacts. Kimberlyn was a “godsend” through the ordeal, Dave said.

They were introduced to her through a friend of a friend, and by the time they arrived on Maui, she had already secured them a rental car, a hotel, and discounts at restaurants, and coordinated interviews with local media.

“We knew nobody. We knew nothing. We had no idea how to even start the process,” Dave said. “She was very instrumental in getting all the resources pulled together. … It was all organized and basically sitting on a platter waiting for us when we got there.

“We met with her and she gave us some insight on what the next steps were going to be, what we needed to do. She was there for just anything we needed. If we needed to talk, she’d make herself available.”

Joey was never found — his car was discovered near Nakalele Point, and Dave said it’s presumed he fell into the water and was swept away — but Dave said the search was so thorough that at least he feels he has a definitive answer in his son’s disappearance.

Kimberlyn said she has helped with many searches that do have happy endings — in one case, for instance, she tracked down a missing man and stayed with him until his family was able to fly over from O‘ahu to get him — though these days she said she is focused on helping families whose cases have gone cold, like the Dungans.

It’s been seven years since Aidan, then 23, who suffers from schizoaffective disorder, vanished from a sober living facility in Wailuku, and the Dungans are still looking for answers.

Laurie said that shortly after they first talked to her on the phone, Kimberlyn became their “point person on the ground.”

“She knows a lot of people in the community, so through her contacts she’d go to places to talk to people, asking if they have seen Aidan — things that we were not able to do from Kauai.”

Laurie said that having Kimberlyn involved in the search for her son has “meant everything” to her.

“She knows what it’s like,” Laurie said. “She’s faced the roadblocks, and she knows the pain—nobody knows what it’s like until you’ve experienced it. … You’re so lost at a time like that, so bewildered through that chaos. With grief like that, it’s hard to focus, so Kim was our focus.”

To this day, Laurie said Kimberlyn is the first person she calls when she wants to talk about Aidan.

“I’m so, so thankful for her and everything she does,” Laurie said. “I think if anybody is ever going to find out what happened to Aidan, it’s probably going to be Kim.”

Kimberlyn said she is in the process of creating case packages for families of missing persons designed to equip them with information about their case and their legal rights. Each will include case timelines and analyses, search maps, and information on any investigative technology relevant to the case, as well as a guide on how to access public records.

Kimberlyn said the goal is to give families tools to help move their cases forward.

“They become their own best advocates, and I want to make sure they know how,” she said.  

As legal proceedings got underway for Charli’s case in 2014, Kimberlyn said she came into the situation “as a lot of families and victims of crimes do — I didn’t know anything.”

So she dove into educating herself on the justice system, and as she learned more, she started advocating for legislation to address gaps she saw. She’s since advocated for and co-authored proposed legislation addressing issues that include child safety and constitutional protections for crime victims within the system.

Currently, Kimberlyn is drafting language for what she hopes will be two new bills, and she said she’s reaching out to state lawmakers in hopes to find sponsors for the proposals. 

The first is one she’s developing with the Dungan family that they’re calling Aidan’s law, designed to strengthen protections for missing persons with mental health and addiction issues, or who are experiencing homelessness, by establishing mandatory reporting timelines to national databases for such individuals, among other requirements.

Kimberlyn said the issue is important to her because many of the missing persons cases she has seen involve individuals with substance abuse issues and/or mental health illnesses.

“Some of the most vulnerable people who go missing in Hawaii are the least likely to have their cases handled with the urgency and visibility that could bring them home — and by the time a family realizes what happened, critical early days have already been lost,” she said.

The other is a no body, no parole law — similar to laws that exist in the United Kingdom and Australia — that would mandate convicted murderers cooperate with authorities to reveal the location of a victim’s remains in order to be eligible for parole.

This one is personal for Kimberlyn. Capobianco’s sentencing includes the possibility of parole, but he has never confessed to Charli’s murder — he continues to maintain his innocence — and her full remains have never been found.

“I don’t want to die with this undone,” she said. “I don’t want to leave it for my daughters to do. I want to do everything within my legal power to make sure that Steven spends every minute of the time he got.”

There are 298 missing persons in Hawai‘i as of this writing, according to the 

National Missing and Unidentified Persons System

, a database for missing persons cases throughout the country.

As Kimberlyn sees it, this means she has more work to do.

Under an umbrella she’s calling UnSolved Maui, Kimberlyn has a few new projects in the pipeline aimed at raising awareness about missing persons cases and providing resources for victims. UnSolved Maui will feature a podcast and YouTube series about missing people in the Islands that she said “is designed to represent each family’s loved one with dignity while making the full scale of what is unresolved in this state visible to the public.”

She’s also aiming to launch a nonprofit arm dedicated to serving families of missing persons and survivors of crimes through advocacy, investigative support, public outreach and other resources.

Kimberlyn is still based on Maui, but today also splits her time between Washington and California to spend time with her daughters and seven grandchildren.

Despite everything they have been through, Kimberlyn said she has raised “very strong, tough, amazing, smart women who are doing just fine.”

Still, there’s the sense that their family will never be truly complete.

“We call it the Charli-shaped hole in our lives,” she said. “It’s just a big hole, you know?”

Kimberlyn’s intense, continued fervor for her work can sometimes be hard for her family to understand. Once, several years ago, her daughters called to make plans to celebrate Mother’s Day. She said they were upset when she told them she wasn’t available because she was going to be spending the day as part of a search party for a missing hiker.

Kimberlyn admits it is draining work. She herself has sometimes questioned how is it that she keeps doing this year after year.

But when asked what keeps her going, she immediately answers: “She does.”

“Charli does. She always will. She is the foundation everything I do is predicated on. This is my way of keeping her alive for everyone,” Kimberlyn said. “I hear this from multiple families with deceased children that one of our worst fears is that our children get forgotten.”

Kimberlyn, of course, can’t forget. She feels the pain of loss constantly.

“There are little things — a song will come on. There are so many triggers, so many painful lumps and bumps when you navigate the world and you have a murdered or missing loved one,” Kimberlyn said.

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It’s not that her work for other victims alleviates her pain; it’s more that it doesn’t have to.

Doing this work, Kimberlyn said, “means that Charli can be right there with me and I don’t have to put her away.”

“If I had gone back to my flower job, I would have had to sit there and smile at people [and say] ‘aloha, here's your flowers.’ … I'm grateful when I look at it from that perspective — that I was able to put myself into something like this where it’s not in conflict with what I'm feeling.”

If Charli were still alive today, she would be 39 years old. Joshua would be 12.

A few years ago, Kimberlyn shared a letter she wrote in tribute to Charli on what would have been her 32nd birthday,posted to the Find Charli Scott Facebook page.

In the letter, Kimberlyn imagined what Charli’s life would have been like at that moment in time. Charli would have graduated college and started her own hair salon that served both people and dogs — something she had dreamt of. She would have found love with a kind man. Joshua would have been four years old, and would have loved playing with his cousins.

Charli Scott was a Maui woman who was murdered in 2014 at age 27 when she was five months pregnant. In the 12 years since her daughter’s death, Kimberlyn Scott has dedicated herself to helping families of missing persons.

Daily Smile: Saturday, Aug. 8, 2026

ASD Staff

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Daily Smile: Saturday, Aug. 8, 2026

Authors

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