Last bodies recovered from Kauai copter crash

LIHUE -- The bodies of all six people killed in a helicopter crash have been recovered from a hillside near Waialeale Crater, officials said Saturday.

Capt. Ken D'Attilio, pilot of the privately owned chopper leading the recovery effort, said crews removed three bodies from the site Saturday morning.

Friday, the bodies of the pilot and two children were brought down from the mountain.

Now crews will focus on removing wreckage from the site.

D'Attilio said there are two main pieces of debris: the chopper's tail boom and the back portion of the cabin. The rest of the craft is scattered in pieces about 100 feet down from the crash site, he said.

The wreckage will be brought to Lihue airport's cargo hangar to be examined by investigators.

Wayne Pollock, an air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said he'll try to determine from the wreckage whether the flight controls, engine parts and rotors of the chopper were working properly.

Autopsy and toxicology reports of the pilot and data from the National Weather Service also will be looked at closely, he said.

Jimmy's Travel customers left high and dry

The failure of Las Vegas junket operator Jimmy's Travel has left 2,500 Hawaii people unable to get trips they paid for, an attorney for travel agency owner James K.S. Lee said.

His advice is to wait until his client files personal bankruptcy, which lawyer Harrison P. Chung said will happen July 13, and then file claims in bankruptcy court. The bottom line, Chung said in a news conference Friday, is that there isn't nearly enough money to meet the claims.

There is at least $750,000 owed to prepaid customers, and the only money that is possibly available is $200,000 in an escrow account at a bank, Chung said. He said he is trying to free up that money but cautioned that some of it will be eaten up by bankruptcy trustee's fees and other expenses.

Lee has provided names of all those who didn't get the trips they paid for, and they should be notified in the mail once the bankruptcy proceedings begin, Chung said.

The Jimmy's Travel office, closed all week, has a hot line set up at 591-0707, the old number of Jimmy's Travel. In a recorded message on that line yesterday, Lee told people to watch television and read the newspapers this weekend and call back after Tuesday for updated information.

Gov. Cayetano OKs vote on holding Con Con

Voters will decide in November whether to hold a constitutional convention.

"While arguments are good on both sides, this issue should be decided at the polls by the voters," Gov. Ben Cayetano said after signing a measure to place the issue on the November ballot.

Among the other bills signed yesterday by Cayetano is a measure that will increase certain court fees. The act takes effect on Wednesday.

The increased fees will raise nearly $3 million annual revenue. Some of the court fees, which are among the lowest in the nation, have not been hiked in 24 years.

The governor also signed a bill that appropriates $2 million from the agriculture loan revolving fund to Big Island, Kauai and Molokai farmers at 5 percent interest instead of the standard 7 percent.

Fire captain fined $500 for fishing with chlorine

A Honolulu Fire Department captain was fined $500 and given 100 hours of community service in marine environmental work for using chlorine to catch fish.

In a plea agreement with the state, Donald Watanabe changed his plea from no contest to guilty to the misdemeanor charge of unlawfully possessing an illegal substance. State fishing rules ban the possession or use of a poisonous substance to take aquatic life.

Watanabe agreed to testify against Henry Rosa, who was charged in the same crime and goes to trial July 20. Rosa faces up to $1,000 in fines and a year in jail if convicted.

Officials in January arrested the two about 50 yards offshore of Kapaliokamoa Point between Queen's Beach and the Makapuu Point lighthouse.

Solo global sailor conquers her doubts

HILO -- There were times as Karen Thorndike sailed alone around the world that she wondered if she made a mistake.

As her 36-foot sailboat Amelia was beaten by wind and sea of the 40th latitude below the equator, she thought, "I really don't have any business being here doing this."

But the 55-year-old woman who wanted "one really big adventure in my life" proved to herself that she made the right decision when she sailed in Hilo Bay Thursday after leaving from the same location 21 months earlier on Oct. 8, 1996.

In between doing television production in her hometown of Seattle, including working on the program Northern Exposure, she had sailed four races to Maui and sailed 10 boats back to the mainland for other owners.

Her round-the-world voyage left from Hilo because its easterly position makes it a better place to reach Tahiti.

In returning here, Thorndike became the first American woman to sail solo around the world entirely in ocean waters, including some of the roughest seas on the planet in the "southern ocean."

Another American woman had made the voyage going from ocean to ocean via canals closer to the equator where seas are calmer.

Six or seven non-American women made the trip earlier.

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See expanded coverage in Saturday's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
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