AROUND THE GREENS
Detective work brings back memories, desire

By Bill Kwon

"Maybe I can fill it up with more winning charms," says Keiki-Dawn Izumi, looking at her bracelet with her cat, Jello. The bracelet was recovered after being stolen from her home 14 years ago. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

"This is really amazing. My mom couldn't believe it," said a surprised Izumi when she went to the Kailua police station to meet McCarthy and claim her bracelet, stolen along with a strand of Mikimoto pearls and a diamond bracelet in a burglary at her Palolo Valley cottage in 1988.

While not as valuable as the yet-to-be-recovered pearls and diamonds, the charm bracelet meant a lot to Izumi. It was more than a sentimental keepsake.

The bracelet had all of her victory charms, about a dozen in all. Only four still remained on the bracelet, three of them commemorating her performances in the Jennie K. Invitational, the Maui Women's Invitational and the Hawaii State Women's Golf Association stroke-play championship.

The missing charms included those she received after winning the Kaua'i Women's tournament and the Navy-Marine, Army and Hickam women's invitationals.

"It's nice that she got it back. It is a rather unique piece. They don't make those charms anymore," said McCarthy, who had visited a number of pawn ships in connection with a burglary investigation he's conducting.

Discovered in pawn shop

During one of his pawn shop rounds, McCarthy came across a bracelet with golf charms attached. So he called the Waialae Country Club and talked to head golf professional Greg Nichols, who, because of the Hawaii State Women's Golf Association charm, referred McCarthy to Kathy Ordway, an HSWGA official.

Told the dates of the charms, Ordway e-mailed several women golfers she knew who played around that time. One was Izumi, who then recalled the stolen bracelet.

Within an hour after calling Ordway, McCarthy got a call from Izumi.

"I think that's my bracelet," Izumi told the detective.

"How do you know?" McCarthy asked.

Izumi told him that her place was broken into 14 years ago and that the bracelet was one of the items taken. She also correctly identified the charms.

That was good enough for McCarthy, who knew Izumi when she was an insurance agent.

Izumi remembers going to different pawn shops immediately after the burglary to look for her missing jewelry before giving up hope. The e-mail from Ordway brought back memories.

"I got hit just a week after I moved in," said Izumi, who now lives with her parents, Donald and Florence Izumi, at Haiku Plantations in Kane'ohe.

The bracelet might have been missing for many years, but it turned up now because it was pawned Aug. 22, said McCarthy.

Time to add more charms

With room for more charms on the bracelet, Izumi thinks it might be incentive enough for her to start playing golf again. She hasn't played a competitive round of golf since the Jennie K. Invitational two years ago.

"Maybe I can fill it up again with more winning charms," said Izumi, who will be 50 in January. Watch out Bev Kim and all the other senior women golfers, Izumi warned with a laugh.

Izumi figures it will take her at least a year to get her game and muscle memory back. And some golf lessons, too.

Izumi proved to be a fast learner when she first took up golf a year after graduating from the University of Hawai'i in 1977.

UH athlete

Besides playing on the UH tennis team, Izumi was a member of the first Wahine basketball team under then-coach Patsy Dung. Her teammates included Sabrina McKenna, now a circuit court judge, and former Punahou girls' basketball coach Shelley Kahuanui Fey.

"I took up golf passionately because it's a prerequisite to a successful career as an insurance agent," said Izumi, a Mid-Pacific Country Club member. "My goal was to get my handicap down to a 24 (from 36) so that I could play in the Jennie K."

Izumi was a 23-handicapper when she won D-flight honors In 1979. Later that year Izumi got her handicap down to 11 and was voted the HSWGA's most improved golfer.

"I later got down to a single with the help of Althea Tome," said Izumi, who once played to a 2-handicap.

In 1991, probably the best year of her career, she says, Izumi won the HSWGA match play championship. She also won the Maui Women's Invitational that year. No mementoes for the bracelet, which was long gone by then.

Izumi also represented Hawai'i in six USGA Women's Mid-Amateur tournaments, and played in every HSWGA match play championship from 1971 through 1996 before cutting back on her golf.

She has spent the past year-and-a-half caring for her ailing mother.

"And I spend two-to-four hours a day in the yard," said Izumi, who is into gardening now that she's helping to maintain the family's 1-acre grounds where she grew up.

She's back to her roots, literally, in Kane'ohe.

Bill Kwon can be reached at bkwon@aloha.net.