My wife is now totally disabled but she is not able to collect Social Security because they said she is two points short of what's needed. The problem is that we can't locate the records showing she worked for Harders company in 1980. We can now only prove she worked beginning in 1981. The company was sold to Cico. We don't have any documents and the state said it didn't have records going back that far. Can you help? Only Circuit Court
can access wage recordsThe state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations said it would not release employment records to anyone.
"Wage records are confidential and only the Circuit Court can retrieve them," said spokesman Pat Stanley. Short of that, he said, you would have to track them down through the employer.
The good news came from Wink Whitaker, director of sales for Cico Enterprise.
"We went through all the old stuff and found a file," he said. "Her paperwork was listed under a different name."
The search revealed records of your wife working for Harders from July 19, 1980, to Aug. 7, 1987. Whitaker said to call the company and copies of her record would be made available.
I am a teacher who took some adult students to a night program at the Honolulu Zoo in December. I just found out that two received parking tickets at $25 a pop, which they paid. Why is a city facility that sponsors a night event that has a parking lot beside it for patrons ticketing them? It's known as the zoo parking lot, but it's really a metered municipal lot, meant for general public use, said Ken Redmond, director of the Honolulu Zoo.
The zoo has no jurisdiction over that lot. When there is an evening zoo event, the public lot is available, "but all the rules apply," Redmond said.
We double-checked and saw signs stating that parking regulations are enforced 24 hours a day.
Are those plastic rings that hold six packs of cans or bottles together recyclable or reusable by anybody? It's a shame to throw them away and they become an ecological problem. No one, at least on Oahu, recycles those plastic rings and the city does not accept them in recycling containers located at schools around the island, said city recycling coordinator Suzanne Jones.
"There is no opportunity for us as yet to include them in our recycling program," she said.
The real issue, Jones said, is making sure those plastic rings don't get blown into the sea, where they may endanger marine life.
Otherwise, the rings don't present a disposal problem. They are not dumped in landfills, but taken to the city's HPOWER waste-to-energy plant. "Plastic is a petroleum-based product and provides high btu to the HPOWER operation," which generates electricity for Hawaiian Electric Co., Jones said.
Aside from that, Jones said there are "craft opportunities" for the rings, such as using them to make leis and flowers.
To the driver of Bus 601, traveling makai on Punchbowl Street at 5:05 p.m. Jan. 23. The "out of service" bus was stopped in the second lane from the curb on Punchbowl, 20 feet from King Street. It did not have the left-turn signal on. While I was four feet from the driver's window, he stuck his head out ranting that he needed two lanes to make his turn. If the driver needs two lanes to turn, he should use the turn signal and take up both lanes at the same time. Auwe
(William Haig, head of customer service for Oahu Transit Service, said records show the bus was not on the road at the time, and could not account for the discrepancy. However, he said buses need only one lane to make a turn.)
