Sometimes, the choices people make are not good ones. By
that I mean the choices lead them down roads that can only
bring about personal ruin. Like, for example, Roy. Roy was, and
still is, a surfer. A good one. He won several national surf
meets.
But in Roy's younger days, he chose to start partaking of a
lifestyle involved with taking drugs. The more drugs he took
the more he wanted. In order to get the money to buy drugs he
started stealing it from his friends and family. Needless to
say, after awhile, he didn't have many good friends left. But
he did have a bunch of bad ones. So he became an entrepreneur
and started selling drugs to them so he could make even more
money to buy more drugs.
But as sometimes happens, he awoke to the realization that
he could not continue to live like that for very much longer.
That his chosen lifestyle would end up killing him sooner,
rather than later.
In local fashion, Roy humbly gives credit to his children
for opening his eyes to his problems. But I think Roy himself
deserves the credit here. Roy turned his life around, gave up
the drugs, and decided to try to repay society for the things
he had done.
As part of that, Roy reckoned if he could guide at least one
youngster away from the path he had chosen, he would have done
good. Being a surfer, he decided to start a charity longboard
surfing contest. While the money generated from the entrance
fees have certainly helped the charities involved, the biggest
pay-back has been the changes to the people, especially the
keiki, who
entered the contest.
Roy acted as a respected elder, explaining, cajoling, and
guiding these keiki into paths away from drugs by
keeping them focused on the discipline required to surf well.
This weekend will mark the 20th anniversary of the event. The
event has grown to more than 300 entrants in several
divisions.
Eight years ago, Roy noticed that most surf contests had no
place for the wahine. So
he started one. His second charity contest is only for females
and gives them a chance to have their day in the sun. It is now
one of the bigger, if not the biggest wahine surf
contest in the world with two to three hundred contestants
entered each year. The most recent wahine contest,
held this
past June, included Bethany Hamilton, who had previously
lost an arm to a shark attack. Hamilton won her event and
donated the $1,000 prize to the Sex Abuse Treatment Center (the
charity for this event).
It is amazing to me how some people can turn their lives
around and by doing so, have a positive ripple effect that
touches thousands of others.
Roy "China" Uemura is one of those people.