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By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Evelyn Luab cries as she looks at photographs of her
daughters Hilovelyn and Switzer.

Distraught mom
misses ‘way
we were’

Two of Evelyn Luab's daughters
are in the hospital since being
struck by a van Aug. 22

---

By Helen Altonn
Star-Bulletin

Evelyn Luab calls her daughter's name and tells her she loves her, but "her eyes don't open."

Hilovelyn, 10, is still in a coma after she and her sister, Switzer, 12, and friend Nancy Phongsavath, 12, were hit by a van while walking home from school Aug. 22.

Nancy was killed, and Switzer has been in The Queen's Medical Center with her sister since the accident. She is in fair condition.

The distraught mother, fighting back tears, said she taught her children always to be careful crossing the street. But the three girls were on the sidewalk when hit.

Family photo
Hilovelyn Luab, 10, who is still in a coma, was hit by
a van Aug. 22 on Kamehameha IV Road in Kalihi.

"A long time, four years, they walked the sidewalk. How come it happened?" she asked.

Now, always fearful, Luab walks with her two youngest children to Kaewai Elementary School and two others to Dole Intermediate School from their Kalihi Valley Housing duplex.

She has another child in Farrington High School and a 2-year-old. Her oldest child is in the Air Force.

TO DONATE Donations for "The Luab sisters" may be sent to the Bank of Hawaii's Kalihi Branch, 1950 N. King St., Honolulu, HI 96819, attention Terry Concepcion.

Speaking through an interpreter, Luab, 37, said she came to Hawaii from the Philippines eight years ago seeking a better life. And it was better, she said, because she was able to get a job, working 4 p.m. to midnight at Wasabi's Bistro in Kaimuki.

She does not want to return to her homeland but said she sometimes thinks, "If I didn't come here, the kids would be OK."

She is on leave from work to visit the children every day, going by bus to and from the hospital.

She said her entire family is suffering from the accident. The children miss their lively sisters, and Luab cannot sleep or eat -- worried about her children, and about the bills. They keep coming, but all she has is a welfare check, and she cannot pay them, she said.

Family photo
Switzer Luab, 12, has been at The Queen's Medical
Center since being hit by a van Aug. 22.
She is in fair condition.

A 23-year-old man driving an AMV Air Conditioning company van struck the girls. His 8-year-old daughter was riding in the van.

He lost control of the van, swerved off Kamehameha IV Road, sideswiped a parked car, ran onto the sidewalk, hit the girls, then a chain-link fence and hedge, and landed in the garage of a Kalihi home.

Luab wants him "to go to jail for lifetime."

She is praying her injured daughters "will be normal again, like the way we were," so she can return to work. The divorced woman is the sole supporter of her family.

She cannot sleep because she hears Hilovelyn asking her every day for $1 for the manapua van, she said. "I miss that," she said.

Switzer also was "very loving," she said, describing the big hole left in the family with the two absent.

Her housing unit is on the second floor. She is appealing to state agencies for ground-floor housing closer to the schools and more accessible for her injured children.