Lia Berger:
Life's not fair, but you have to deal with it.
An optimist
battles the odds
'When God closes a door,
By Pat Bigold
he opens a window,' she says
Star-BulletinLAHAINA, Maui -- Lia Berger understands that life is not fair.
"No, it's not, but you have to deal with it," said the 17-year-old Lahainaluna High School student.
The oldest child in a family that barely escaped homelessness on Oahu five years ago, Berger has put together a jaw-dropping combination of achievements in the face of severe financial adversity.
She has a cumulative 3.66 grade-point average and was a four-year varsity wrestler who won a state championship this spring. She has starred in a handful of Maui Theater musical productions and won five Chevron Speech Festival Awards.
But her chance of pursuing those activities in college is fading.
Berger, her parents and five siblings live in a state housing project on Mill Street, a hot, dusty neighborhood adjacent to the Pioneer Sugar Mill.
Across the narrow street are the cane-train tracks, over which cars hauling sugar cane rumble every hour during harvest season. When it's hot and the wind kicks up, red dust blows through the louvers and the family must close the slats.
That makes the small dwelling almost unbearably hot.
"You breathe fire," said her mother, Sophie Berger.
Mom stays home to care for her large family, but she occasionally uses her hair-dressing skills to earn money. She has done it to pay for Lia's music lessons.
Berger's father, Sama Mataafa, suffers from the wearying effects of Hepatitis C. He performs maintenance around the David Malo Circle housing area where his family lives. He earns $750 a month, and he also manages to pick up security work at restaurants and clubs.
Life is clearly not easy for Lia Berger, but she is undaunted in her academic and athletic pursuits.
After winning her state wrestling title in February, Berger was invited to the U.S. High School Girls' Wrestling Championships in Ann Arbor, Mich. She couldn't raise the air fare, however, and was forced to stay home.
"I told mom, 'I'm going, I'm going.' But there were no sponsors," she said. "I made some contacts but they didn't get back to me in time.
"But my mom always says that when God closes a door, he opens a window."
One window that opened, albeit slightly, was college and a chance to fulfill her dream of majoring in drama. She received letters of acceptance from Boston University and the University of Southern California.
But there is no way the family can afford tuition at those private universities. And flying to either one to audition for drama courses is out of the question -- even if she were to receive a generous federal grant, there would be a need for air fare and living expenses.
The family's financial difficulties began to mount in 1992, when Mataafa was laid off from his construction job. Lia was forced to give up a scholarship to Punahou so the family could accept a state housing opportunity on Maui. The waiting lists on Oahu were too long. Had they stayed on Oahu for Lia's sake, they faced homelessness.
"We had no medical insurance, we had no money for food or rent," Sophie said. "We just hit rock bottom."
Even though life hasn't taken any dramatic financial turns for the better since then, Lia still finds reasons to hope and to be happy.
"I can see the whales from up here, and it's really pretty," she said, looking down from the Lahainaluna campus, high on the mountain slope. "I still get excited when I see them, even though I've lived here so long now. A lot of people don't, but I still do."
