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.
