Graduate student, a bright future gone in a moment
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
The only warning the Onishi family received before disaster struck was an odd shaking and a rumbling some time before 2 a.m.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
It woke Patrick Onishi, his wife, Gail, and their 23-year-old son, Blaine, from a sound sleep.
Patrick Onishi holds a photo of his daughter Dara Rei Onishi, 26, who was killed by the boulder while she slept.
Dara Rei Onishi, a 26-year-old Yale alumna and Columbia University graduate student, was asleep in her room in the southeast corner of the house.
Then the boulder hit, and Dara — a future teacher who may have had a little political blood in her veins —was gone.
The rock was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, weighed five tons and came from the near-vertical cliffside that looms skyward above the Onishi house on Henry Street in Nu'uanu.
For more than 100 yards it rolled downward, rumbling and shaking the ground, flattening trees and gaining speed. Bouncing from rock to rock, it changed course several times, looming above one house and then another.
Firefighters say the path the boulder carved stopped 30 feet above the Onishi house, just at the spot where a culvert protected by a rock wall tracks across the cliffside.
They think the boulder became airborne as it struck the wall, then arched through the air toward the southeast wall of the home.
Dara's family members, including her 30-year-old brother, Brady who lives in California, were in shock and had not yet come to grips with the reality of their loss, said their father, Patrick Onishi.
Still, he tried to give reporters who congregated outside his house a taste of what his daughter had meant to him.
"She was enthusiastic," he said. "She was accomplished. She was a loving child. She had a deep desire to experience life, and she was just catching up with herself.
"We loved her very much," Onishi said.
Dara had worked since January as an administrative assistant to city Managing Director Ben Lee.
Yesterday, family members and friends, including Mayor Jeremy Harris and his wife, Ramona, came to the house throughout the day bearing trays of sushi. Delivery workers arrived via florist trucks with bouquets and planters.
"She was just a sweet angel," Ramona Harris said as she left.
Mayor Harris said he and his wife had known Dara for years because her father had served in the city administration as planning director from 1995 to 1998. Harris' voice broke when he described her. "When you say the best and the brightest, that's what she was," he said. "She was so caring, so positive, so kind to everyone."
At Honolulu Hale, city workers were stunned. They described Dara as exceptionally kind and caring and someone clearly headed for a bright future.
Lee said he has known her parents for 30 years.
"She was the most loving, most wonderful person in the office," Lee said. "We're so sad, so sad that this happened. "
A 1994 graduate of Punahou School, Dara earned a bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies from Yale University in 1997.
After she graduated from Yale, Dara went to Akita prefecture in Japan to teach English.
In 1999, she returned to Hawai'i and served as an adjunct instructor for Hawai'i Tokai International College and then as the children's program coordinator at the Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hotel.
Since last summer, she had been pursuing post-graduate studies at the University of Hawaii-Manoa associated with requirements for the Teachers College Teaching of English program.
Lee said Dara was excited about going back to school.
She had been living at home, her father said, and next Friday was to be her last work day before returning to her studies on the Mainland and the boyfriend of seven years who waited for her there.
In the back window of Dara's light blue Honda, parked on the street in front of the house, was a letter thanking the city's workers for assisting with the Bruce Willis movie recently filmed in Honolulu. A book on "understanding movies" was in the back seat, next to a stuffed dog. A crystal heart hung from the rearview window, and Dara's Mary Jane shoes and a pair of sandals shared the floor space on the front passenger side of the car.
When authorities arrived early yesterday, there was little that firefighters could do beyond removing Dara's body from the debris and giving her parents a little time alone with her before the body was taken from the house, Fire Capt. Richard Soo said.
Gladys Muromoto, who lives across the street, remembers Dara as a person who always had a smile and a kind greeting.
"When I think about it," she said, "I wonder where God was when this happened."
Staff writers Robbie Dingeman and Vicki Viotti contributed to this report
