Real Honolulu P.I.
case resurfaces
on FX tonight
HAWAII private investigators Terry Pennington and Joe Cabrejos get their 15 minutes of fame tonight when a case they worked more than two decades ago is aired on "P.I." on the FX channel at 10 p.m.
Pennington and Cabrejos, who work with Goodenow Associates in Honolulu, were hired in the 1980s to find the son of a multimillionaire electronics manufacturer. The son had been sent by his parents to Oahu for drug and alcohol rehab treatment at Habilitat but left the facility prematurely then lived among the homeless, scavenging food from trash cans.
"P.I.": 10 p.m. tonight on FX
"P.I." producers contacted the pair last April looking for Hawaii stories.
"We get a lot of calls for this type of thing ... so we kind of blew them off ... but they were very persistent and kept calling," Cabrejos said. "So we agreed to work with them."
Pennington and Cabrejos, both graduates of Chaminade University, have worked for Goodenow for about 20 years. The men provided "P.I." information on a variety of cases but struck gold with the missing man case.
"Our job was to find the guy and get him back into rehab," Cabrejos said. "But the case had an extra element because he was an adult so we would have to get a court order to pick him up after we proved he was a danger to himself."
The show, which filmed here for eight days in May and August, is a reenactment but the subject's real name is not used. The investigation starts with an islandwide search by as many as 10 investigators. The missing man, worth about $20 million, is found in Waikiki after a week.
"We spotted him running across Kalakaua to a Jack-in-the-Box trash can, pulling out a half-eaten burger," Cabrejos said. "It was a needle in a haystack situation.
"Here's this guy on Oahu who doesn't know anybody or have anything and our job was to find him."
The only clue the investigators had was a dated photo. The search included the harbor, airport, beaches and talking to street people and druggies.
"When you enter Habilitat they shave your head and after a day or two Joe said let's white out the hair and, amazingly enough, once that was done, he just jumped out at us when we spotted him," Pennington said.
To prove the man was a danger to himself and possibly to others, the investigators watched him 24 hours a day for four days to videotape him drinking, stealing, using drugs and passing out on Waikiki Beach, where Cabrejos pulled him the surf. They still had to wait a weekend to get the court order, but lost him at 4 a.m. that Sunday morning.
"Joe suggested we get up on a roof of one of the condos to search the area and when we did we spotted the guy curled up in a fetal position on top of a parking stall," Pennington said. "Then an elderly Japanese women spotted (the vagrant) and started beating his feet with a broom."
The investigators had their court order and detained him. He offered no resistance.
"P.I." premiered last month as part of the FX "Friday Night Fix" line-up. The reality series follows real private investigators in reenactments of cases they've handled. The show is hosted by Ed Myers, also a private investigator.
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