In one of the first posts on this blog, I mentioned that Mahealani, Dan and I put in an eight-hour day, and sometimes longer. All three of us often head out into the field to get stories. Here’s one I was sent to cover on Tuesday.
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This post’s title is the acronym for “not in my back yard.” And this story had to do with an area less than a block from where I grew up in Kalihi Valley. It’s the area below a bridge for Likelike Highway, just before the Wilson St. intersection as you’re Kane`ohe bound. When I was growing up, there used to be a pedestrian walkway below the bridge, which Dole Intermediate School students and others could use to get from one side of the highway to the other. That walkway is long gone, since it became a haven for crime and drugs. Over the years, it has become a well-hidden haven for the homeless and more drug dealing.
If you saw the story Tuesday, I talked with Jamie Gamatero, who moved into the neighborhood just last September, and whose back yard is next to the bridge. Over those months she’s had to put up with homeless people fighting, stealing and drug dealing at all hours of the day and night. She’d been looking for help from the police, the neighborhood board — basically whomever she could talk to.
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On Tuesday, a group including Rep. Dennis Arakaki, Dole Middle School teacher Pat Matsumoto, volunteers from the Dole student council, Honolulu police, a Farrington High School football player, workers from the State Department of Transportation, and a few parents — including Gamatero (she’s in the orange t-shirt) — set out to clean up the area.
The students, dressed in jeans and t-shirts and wearing latex gloves beneath heavy work gloves, cut down the overgrowth, painted over the graffiti, carried out all kinds of trash (old bicycles, mattresses, stuffed animals — boy, there was a lot of stuff down there!) 
The place smelled pretty bad, and there were bugs everywhere. Every once in a while, a few girls would scream, indicating that a centipede had crawled up from the detritus. Somone, usually one of the police officers, would dispose of the critter, and the students would continue their work.
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Here, KITV photographer Rex Von Arnswaldt gets a closeup of the kids doing their work as Dole Middle School teacher Pat Matsumoto passes by in the foreground. She was right in the thick of things, directing the students and doing her share of cleaning up. I should mention that Matusmoto and the students volunteered to do this on vacation time.
This story isn’t over yet. Gamatero would like to see some “No Trespassing” signs put up, so that police will be able to make arrests. The signs won’t be tacked onto the walls, however. Instead, they’ll be put on posts and set into concrete to make them difficult to remove. Meanwhile, Gamatero says she’ll be keeping a close eye on the area to make sure no one’s messing with her “back yard.”
Thanks to John Mizuno for the photos.
Ben.
bgutierrez@thehawaiichannel.com
