SCOOPS CASEY KREGER / 1924-2005

‘Miss Fixit’ had
answers for her puzzled
newspaper readers

She was a garbage collector, a custodian and a postal worker. She tried driver's-licensing work, car washing and cesspool pumping. No doubt she would have taken on firefighting, too, if not for blowing out her knee on the fitness test.

For decades, Scoops Casey Kreger gave Honolulu newspaper readers a look at the working ranks -- taking on a different job each week and detailing her adventures in a popular and well-read column.

Kreger, who graduated from Roosevelt High School at 15 and started as a proofreader at her decades-long workplace -- the Honolulu Advertiser -- the same year, died Saturday at Maunalani Nursing and Rehabilitation Center after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 80.

Kreger was born Tsuneko Oguri but legally changed her name to Scoops Casey after taking on the pen name for her Advertiser column, her son said. Kreger's first husband, Brian Casey, was a political reporter for the Advertiser and later became a city councilman.

Leo Casey, Kreger's son, said he grew up seeing his mother take on different jobs and have fun doing it.

Kreger attended the University of Hawaii, where she befriended author James Jones -- at the time a UH student and soldier at Schofield Barracks. Jones would go on to immortalize Kreger, his lifelong friend, in "From Here to Eternity" by naming a prostitute after her, Casey said.

"I gave him hell for making me look like a shack-up job," Kreger told Newsweek in an article on the Pearl Harbor attack.

When she took on her "Miss Fixit" column in 1969, which answered readers' questions on next to everything, she told readers, "A bit barnacle-encrusted I may be, but I hope that as Miss Fixit my 'maturing' and many years in the business of getting to facts quickly will prove useful in helping Advertiser readers with their puzzling questions."

Kreger is survived by sons Leo and Sean. Services are pending.