DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Aloha Dalire showed yesterday the bracelet that was given to her when she won the first Miss Aloha Hula competition during the Merrie Monarch Festival in 1971. The bracelet was among 149 pieces of her jewelry that were featured on a new Web site created by the Honolulu Police Department to display recovered stolen items so owners can claim them.
Web site reunites
owner with stolen items
Kumu hula Aloha Dalire "was devastated" Sept. 2 when robbers broke into her Kaneohe home and stole bracelets and other jewelry from her bedroom.
Dalire, who won the first Miss Aloha Hula title in 1971 and has seen three of her daughters win the same title, smiled at a Honolulu Police Department press conference yesterday before cameras and a table decked with $45,000 of her jewelry that police and Drug Enforcement Administration personnel recovered in a search of a Kahuku home during a drug investigation. No arrests have been made.
Pieces of Dalire's jewelry appeared Monday on a new Police Department Web site that shows thousands of dollars' worth of jewelry, electronic equipment, baseball card collections and other items recovered by police and the DEA during several drug-related searches.
The site had pictures of 236 pieces of jewelry and 381 other items. About 140 of the jewelry items were claimed by Dalire, who had previously filled out detailed police reports describing what had been taken.
Acting Lt. John McCarthy urged people to take an inventory of valuable possessions or use a digital camera to record them so they can be identified by police if stolen.
"It feels great to get my stuff back," Dalire said as she gazed across a police blue tablecloth bearing treasures, including the first Hawaiian bracelet she received and seven gold Hawaiian bracelets that belong to her grandchildren.
"There are so many things here that I cannot put a money value on," Dalire said with tear-glassed eyes.
Dalire said that apart from the jewelry, the most important possession detectives recovered was a Chinese box containing several feather leis.
"It was nerve-wracking trying to remember what I had," said Dalire.
She said that as soon as the HPD Web site went up, family, friends and former students started calling to tell her that her jewelry was there.
Dalire said she had previously identified many of the pieces that were shown on the site and was angry when she saw them online because she did not want to fight anyone else for ownership of her own jewelry.
"I'm going to the bank now to put everything into a safety deposit box," she said.
