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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
RIP
>> Honolulu
The next morning, Honolulu newspaper readers woke up to Cruz MacKenzie's latest column played at the top of Page One:
As he often did after work, Jimmy Del Rosario turned to the sea for relief and recreation yesterday. The sea instead offered death.
Del Rosario worked as a parking valet at the Moana-Surfrider Hotel. Following a 12-hour shift -- the OT necessitated when a co-worker called in sick -- Del Rosario told friends that he was "going go grab my board."
Ninety minutes later, his surfboard was found floating just offshore near Queen's Beach. The board, bright yellow with red, green and black parallel swiggles, was a vintage twin-fin Mark Foo Waikiki Charger.
Police were called and shortly thereafter Del Rosario's body was found floating in 20 feet of water by city lifeguards. His left arm was bitten off and his left leg had been fractured below the knee by what appeared to be another bite, from which wounds he bled to death.
It was dark when the attack occurred and Del Rosario's absence was not noted by the few surfers still out at that late hour.
"You don't pay much attention to other guys. You catch your last wave and take it in," said Ed Furtado, a bartender at Aaron's who was surfing nearby at the time of the attack. "It's not like you go around saying 'good night' to everybody before you catch your last wave, eh."
Giovanni Wang, who replaced Del Rosario when he got off work at the Moana, described him as "a guy with real aloha for people. A good heart ... He loved his surfing. He'd go out at any time, day or night. That was his thing. Lots of times, on his day off, he'd give surfing lessons to the tourists. That's the kind of guy he was. I remember, Jimmy was tired when I saw him, long day, and we're jamming right now with the Apple convention, so he put in his miles. 'But in 20 minutes,' he says, 'I'm gonna be wet and everything will be cool.'"
Cruz himself, still wired after just beating deadline, and feeling both grief over losing a friend and incredible happiness from his blossoming relationship with Jasmine, stayed up late and knocked back a bottle of chardonnay, and then slept in uneven bursts. He awoke four or five times, the last time at 5:55, convinced that Daren Guy had died from a shark attack. Five attacks, four islands, two weeks.
He was also convinced, as he stopped by the office to get a fresh notebook, a pack of mini cassettes and a fistful of pens from the supply cabinet, that Prof. Delbert Pester was right: If we don't do something, the sea would belong to sharks. It already did. Cruz would never swim or dive again.
Sheesh, he might have to take up ballroom dancing or something. Whatever. Give this one up. Let Daren Guy rest in peace.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com
