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Surf event to Dana Ambrose's love of the ocean and flair for life are captured in a logo for the upcoming women's 2000 Vans Triple Crown of Surfing.
use crash victim’s
logo design
Dana Ambrose designed the
whimsical artwork just two days
before she was killedBy Jaymes K. Song
Star-BulletinThe design, drawn by Ambrose, features a smiling, blond, free-spirited girl holding a surfboard and waving a shaka sign.
"It's really cute," said Jacque Rarick, whose teen-age son dated Ambrose. "It's just Dana with a shaka."
But the 19-year-old Ambrose, of Haleiwa, never got to see the completed, colored image because of a two-car crash on the Pali Highway on Oct. 7, just a couple of days after making the drawing.
Ambrose was killed when off-duty Honolulu police officer Clyde Arakawa slammed his 1983 Ford Thunderbird into her 2000 Honda Civic. Arakawa, 49, was arrested for drunken driving and negligent homicide, but released without charges, pending further investigation.
Ambrose's design is the first for the women's Triple Crown contest. With the growth in women's surfing, competition coordinators wanted a design for the female contestants.
"It's fun, whimsical and young," said Randy Rarick, the surf competition's executive director. "Dana's 19 and the perfect one to do it."
Ambrose's design will be printed on hundreds of T-shirts to be sold for about $20 each at all the Triple Crown competitions, as well as North Shore surf shops. The contests run from Nov. 12 through Dec. 21 at various North Shore surfing spots.
A portion of the money will go to Honolulu's junior lifeguard program, Randy Rarick said. Since Ambrose worked as a lifeguard in California, she would want to help future lifeguards, he said.
Ambrose intended the girl on the logo to look "local," with tan skin and dark hair. But designer Derek A. Ho colored the drawing in the likeness of Ambrose after meeting her.
"It's got her aura," Randy Rarick said of the logo. "It's a good tribute to her.
"She'd be stoked to see everyone wearing her shirt."
The piece was not the first for Ambrose. She created several designs in California, including T-shirt logos for two surf shops.
Meanwhile, Ambrose's friends and family wonder what could have been.
She moved to Hawaii from San Clemente, Calif., last year to study art in college.
She recently was awarded a scholarship to the University of Hawaii-Manoa, where she was scheduled to start classes in January.
"She would've made it," said Rick Delanty, Ambrose's art teacher at San Clemente High School. "She's awesome. The best was that she was creative and independently minded."
"She was always extremely creative and artistic," said her mother, Susan Ambrose. "We had encouraged her to be the best she could with whatever gifts God gave her."
Susan Ambrose received a handmade pot with flowers painted on it from her daughter for her birthday weeks before the crash.
The pot had a small message which read: "If moms were flowers, I would've picked you."