Free Date With the Devil by Don Lasseter Page B

with short dark hair and a great tan. Nice-looking and a nice guy.” Asked if he appeared to be of Hawaiian or Islander descent, Rick replied, “Not when you first saw him. You would say no, but the minute he started to talk, you would say yes. He used that noticeable pidgin English.”
    Nearly everyone in local Hawaiian social circles has a colorful nickname. Rick laughed as he spoke of it. “Mike was ‘Keoke’ and Kristin became ‘Chickie.’” No one could explain why. She was just “Chickie.” Everybody knew her and thought she and Keoke made a handsome couple.
    Keoke’s private pilot’s license allowed him to fly a small plane frequently between the Islands. It nearly cost him his life. He crashed in a remote section of Molokai, the island once known for its leper colony. Rick recalled it. “If he hadn’t had a cell phone with him, Keoke probably wouldn’t have survived. I believe he called Kristin from the wreckage. She relayed it to emergency responders, who arrived on the scene and transported Keoke for medical help. She spent a lot of time with him in the hospital helping him to recover. They really seemed to love each other a lot.”
    As with most love relationships, problems developed. Kristin’s fun-loving behavior perhaps grated on Keoke’s nerves. Said Rick, “Keoke didn’t like Kristin partying. He wasn’t into that kind of activity. He was really a good guy, and would have a few beers with his buddies, but wasn’t a hell-raiser. He grew up in Maui, and a lot of guys who are from the island are not big drinkers.” A smile lit Rick’s face as he made these observations, and he added, “But a lot of them smoke quite a bit.” He explained that there is a lively trade of locally grown marijuana available. It was once known as “Maui Wowie.”
    Before Peter gave Kristin a car, Rick offered to provide her with a vehicle. He recalled, “Cars change hands over there, sometimes as gifts. A guy might have a car worth only a few hundred bucks, and when he decides to leave the Islands, sometimes it’s easier to just give it to a buddy rather than try to sell it.” It happened to Rick. “My neighbor had a little mini–station wagon. In his job as golf pro, he used to drive Michael Jordan around in that car so the famous basketball player could remain incognito. He said he couldn’t get the passenger seat back far enough and Jordan had to jam his knees against the dashboard. When that guy was getting ready to leave, he asked me if I wanted the car. I told him I didn’t have any money. So he said, ‘Aw, just take it,’ and he signed it over to me. That’s part of the aloha spirit over there.”
    In 1994, Rick left the Islands for California, then lived in Tampa, Florida, for a while, moved to Puerto Rico, and returned to Hawaii in 1997. A friend had offered him a job on the pineapple island, Lanai.
    By this time, Kristin had moved into a plantation-type house owned by Keoke. Rick liked the place. “The floor was about three or four feet above the ground for airflow ventilation, like a plantation house. Kristin had a room there for some time before she and Keoke began living together. I went over there for Kristin’s twenty-ninth birthday in May 1998 and stayed a couple of nights. It was roomy and quite comfortable.”
    Robin, Kristin’s sister, also succumbed to the lure of the Islands and moved to Maui. She brought her two children, ages one and two, and lived in Kahana at the Island’s western shore. While her husband did construction work, Robin followed Kristin’s pattern and found employment in a restaurant. Rick, Robin, and Kristin, although widely separated by water and mountains, managed periodic visits with each other. Robin’s stay lasted only six months, and she returned to California.
    As the decade of the 1990s drew to a close,