By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

A class he took as an elective at Honolulu Community College changed Wil Koki's life.

"The first day I was in class, I knew. I knew this was what I was supposed to do."

For some reason, sign language came easily to Koki.

"What usually takes people three years to learn took me three months."

American Sign Language is very similar to French, Koki says, where it's object-subject-verb. "So in English, you would say, 'I'm going to the store' and in American Sign Language, you say, 'Store I'm going.' "

Koki went on to American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter training programs and became a nationally certified ASL/English interpreter. Over the past 17 years, he has interpreted everything from Lamaze classes to a production of "Phantom of the Opera," even President Clinton's "speech on the beach."

His specialty is in what's called "high visual" sign language — signs used by deaf people who haven't learned ASL or who learned to communicate with their hearing family through improvised "home signs." "It's kind of like they talk broken ASL like someone would talk broken English."

This summer, Koki started on a new path in his journey. He became an independent living specialist for the Hawai'i Centers for Independent Living. His work is varied, from helping deaf people negotiate home rental agreements to assisting in obtaining disability benefits. The one thing he doesn't do is "case manage."

"Case management is when I tell a consumer what their options are and then what I think they should do, and then go ahead and do it for them," Koki explains. "What I do is help my consumers collect resources, arm them with options, but they make the decisions about their own lives. They take action."

The other twist his path has taken is that Koki is going deaf. It started three years ago with a ringing in his ears. His hearing has continued to degenerate, and though he doesn't think he'll have total loss, he's already wearing hearing aids, already missing out on conversation in noisy rooms.

"As I worked within the deaf community, a lot of people told me, 'You should have been born deaf' because I was so able to pick up the language, and lo and behold, now I am."

Now that he is truly becoming a peer of his consumers, he is experiencing firsthand the lack of awareness the hearing world has for the deaf population. For example, while traveling recently, Koki's departure gate was changed. The airline announced the change on the loudspeaker, but didn't change the information on the overhead computer screens. "There's so little visual communication everywhere," Koki points out. "Now I'm damn mad," he says. And then he corrects himself. "No, now I'm very motivated."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.