Stephanie Bolton: Creative Art and Dance
“I was born eating and breathing paint—it’s in my blood!” says Stephanie Bolton, a third-generation artist who grew up on Hawai‘i Island. Both her maternal and paternal grandmothers were artists, her father is a sculptor and architect and her mother…
The Three Kapu of the Spiritual Warrior
The Hawaiian elder Hale Makua looked us over slowly in the fading light of our long day of discussion as the winds around the crater subsided into silence. The air felt soft, and our mood reflected this, creating a sense…
Lava Rock Realty
Peggy Yuan, owner and principal broker of Lava Rock Realty, says she always had a dream of opening her own real estate company since she got her broker’s license in 1995. She moved to Hawai‘i Island from Honolulu in 1998…
dlb & associates, LLC
When your property lines are established, your neighbors’ boundaries are also established. And their neighbors, …and their neighbors…,” says Daniel L. Berg, owner of surveying firm dlb + associates, LLC. He emphasizes the importance of knowing the exact location of…
Edible Flowers by Adaptations
A flowery splash of color and flavor atop your salad, soup or dessert at a local restaurant may have originated at Adaptations, Inc. of South Kona. Owners Tane and Maureen Datta began growing edible flowers in 1989 to fill the…
Abundant Life Natural Foods
Abundant Life Natural Foods in downtown Hilo, founded by Leslie Malulani Shizue Miki in 1977, has been making healthy living affordable on Hawai‘i Island for 34 years. The retail store is an out-growth of Abundant Life Herb Company, which used…
Plumbing Strategies, Inc
Close friends and business associates for more than 25 years, Alex and Heather Austin and Tony and Leolani Welsh, found life in the northwestern part of the mainland a little gray. Even though they loved the area, says Tony Welsh,…
Nooho‘ana Solar Technologies
The company name—Noho‘ana—means “way of life.” “That is really what we are promoting, a new way of thinking about how you use and generate power for your business and home, your way of life,” says Julia Paschoal-Cano, president of the…
Malama Pono Health Care
Claudia Christman has a deep-seated desire to help people live healthy lives. She began her medical career as a nurse practitioner who helped people manage chronic conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. “Seeking new learning,” Dr. Christman says,…
Healthy Skin Clinic
Dr. Alice Adee came to Hilo from California in 1992 as a young family practice doctor with two babies and no job. After briefly working for Bay Clinic, she started her own practice. After a few years, she decided to…
Marooned! An excerpt from Noni: The Complete Guide for Consumers and Growers
In a sense, the human race is marooned on a small island in a vast sea of space. The island is called Earth. On this island, we depend on plants for survival. The existence of the human species is made…
Rights and Respect for Native Fishing
By Prana Joy Mandoe A few years ago, a Hawaiian fisherman noticed a huge ball of akule boiling off the pier at Kailua-Kona. He tucked his whip net under a boogie board and circled the fish. It was a grand…
Kona MacNet
Brian Parnell, manager of Kona MacNet, is passionate about “all things Apple.” It’s a good thing, because he shares that passion with everyone who walks into the store in the Henry Street Shops in Kailua-Kona. Parnell has been the manager…
ATR Properties, Inc.
A strategic career change in 1991 set Geri Stephens on a new path to success in commercial real estate and a thriving business in vacation rental property management. As a self-described “local girl,” she realizes that she’s come a long…
Ali‘i Custom Gates
Decorative metal gates are a popular feature of fine homes and businesses all over the island. Ray Huff, owner of Ali‘i Custom Gates, realized that the climate here can be harsh on some metal surfaces. “We saw the need for…
Legend of the Gourd, a Legend of Ka‘ū
Retold by Caren LoebelFried Long ago in Ka‘ū, Hawai‘i, there lived a young man and woman who loved each other very much. Although they were both from families of ali‘i, their parents did not approve of the relationship. And so…
Koehnen’s Interiors
Koehnen’s Interiors has deep roots in Hilo and the home furnishings store has survived more extreme challenges than most—two tsunamis, four floods, several sugar strikes and all of the fluctuating economies since 1929! Karyl Franks, manager, tells the story: “My…
Ka Puana: Pu‘uhonua
By Linda Ching In the Hawaiian world order, there was always room for forgiveness. Transgressors of the strict and sacred laws of the land could always find redemption and a second chance waiting if they could make it to the…
The Life in Business: Paradise Found Realty
After attending college and enjoying traveling to Europe, India and Nepal Lorraine Kohn moved to the Big Island in 1977, and found it was a great place to raise her two sons, Chris and Donny. She became a Realtor in…
The Life in Business: Aloha Business Services
Jeff Turner came to the Big Island 20 years ago. As a CPA who also had real-life experience as an entrepreneur, he found he understood the challenges of business owners better than most accountants. He started serving Kona clients in…
The Life in Business: Down to Earth
Down to Earth is a Hawaii-born pioneer of healthy eating. It was started in 1977, when a group of friends in Wailuku, Maui, turned their vision into a business dedicated to improving the health of Hawaii’s island communities. Since then,…
The Life in Business: Shipman House Bed and Breakfast
What is now the Shipman House Bed and Breakfast Inn has been in Barbara Andersen’s [Shipman] family since 1901. Seventeen years ago, when she returned to her childhood home of Hilo, she says the house “looked like the movie set…
Then & Now: Murder & Movies in Old Honoka‘a Town
By Ann C. Peterson For many decades, sugar was king throughout the island chain, and in no place was this more so than in the folksy village of Honoka‘a in the northeast district of Hamakua. At its core, Honoka‘a embodied…
Ka Puana: I Mua e Nā Wāhine
By Jackie Pualani Johnson Our backs twist together, nā wāhine o ke kai. We plunge our paddles as one, forcing the Pacific Under the ‘ama, the canoe piercing the incoming swell Salty spray clinging to lashes, lips, Filling the bottom…
The Life in Business: Showcase Gallery
Emily Gualtieri and Gary Brown, fine artists and owners of Showcase Gallery in South Kona, moved to Hawai‘i in 1989 and sold their silver and niobium jewelry at local art and craft shows and galleries around the state. Emily descends…
The Life in Business: A Hui Hou Crematory & Funeral Home
Penny Brumbaugh came to Hawai‘i in 2003 to open and manage a funeral home in West Hawai‘i for another company. After a few months the company decided that West Hawai‘i wasn’t a good market for them, and they decided to…
Is It Your Business or Your Life? Big Island Business Owners Find the Critical Balance
By Grif Frost, Life Quality Business Consultant Owning a business should give you freedom. Freedom to set your work hours…to decide what you do (and more importantly don’t have to do). Freedom to earn as much money as you want.…
Then & Now: Multi-Cultural Holualoa—The “Long Sled”
By Ann C. Peterson When King Kamehameha ruled from Kamakahonu (near today’s Kailua Pier), he would look up to the slopes of Hualalai and know that all was good. This is where he had built Kuahewa, an extensive, dry-land farming…
Ka Puana: A Dream of Old Hawai‘i
I had a dream, a dream of old Hawai‘i. And in that dream, a woman stood beside me, and in her arms were stories that were pure as gold, but stories that looked sadly old, stories that had not been…
The Life in Business: Mountain Gold Jewelers
Mountain Gold Jewelers is a jewelry store and design studio owned and operated by master goldsmith Moses Thrasher. Specializing in diamonds, opals and pearls of all kinds, Thrasher has been a goldsmith for over 35 years and can design and…
