By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

In his book "Standing for Something," Gordon Hinckley tells this story to make a point about life-changing decisions.

Hinckley once worked in the baggage department of a Denver railroad station. One day he got a call from the station in Newark, N.J. A train had arrived without its baggage car and 300 passengers were pretty steamed about it. After some calling around, it was discovered that the train originated in California and made stops in Salt Lake City, Denver and St. Louis on the way to Newark. However, in St. Louis, a switchman had mistakenly moved a piece of steel just 3 inches. That piece of steel was a switch point, and the baggage car that should have gone on to New Jersey ended up 1,400 miles away in New Orleans.

Hinckley writes, "Prisons all over this country are filled with people who made unwise and even destructive choices, individuals who moved a switch point in their lives just a little and were soon on the wrong track going to the wrong place."

Wayne Kaohi knows all about switch points. Kaohi, 54, has been incarcerated for a total of 28 years, though he had a couple of squandered second chances on the outside between stretches in prison. He's had a lot of time to reflect on his choices and to talk to other inmates about theirs. He has cultivated a wealth of stories of regret, tales of bad decisions, of small stumbles that led to lives in free fall. Thanks to the support of warden Clayton Frank and a group of prison guards willing to come in on their days off, Kaohi gets the chance to make these stories mean something.

Before they pass through the locked gate into the razor-wire compounds of OCCC, the students learn the rules of the place. They can have nothing in their pockets, no jewelry except wedding rings, no hats or hair clips or rubber bands, and no communicating with any of the inmates.

The tour includes a pass by a cluster of cells where the "problem" prisoners are held. "Not too much screaming today," says Officer Barry Danielson over the screams of several inmates. "It's a quiet day."

At a stop at the psychiatric unit, Sgt. Villamor Espiritu encourages the students to go all the way inside an empty cell. "See how you like it," he says.

Kaohi is the main attraction of the visit. The students gather in the prison library and Kaohi lays it out for them. The difference between a successful life on the outside and a wasted life on the inside, he tells them, can come down to one bad decision.

He tells the story of a bright young woman he met on the outside at a "party." She was a college student who insisted she was using drugs "just recreationally." Kaohi was re-arrested days later, and when he called his friend's house to see if someone could come bail him out, the young woman was still there, still partying. Months later, he saw her again. She was emaciated, strung out, selling her body for drugs. "No more college graduation for her," Kaohi says. "Selling her body. Some recreation."

Kaohi spends a lot of time talking about drugs. He never says things like "Don't do drugs" or "Just say no." Instead, he talks about what happened to his life and the lives around him as a result of drugs. Drugs and crime, drugs and violence, it's all related, he tells the kids. "A drug dealer's goal is to get the drug into your body just once. Just once. After that, he's got you."

Bright is careful to explain that Student Future Awareness is nothing like the old-school "Scared Straight" programs of the 1980s. The kids don't get yelled at. It's not about confrontation and intimidation, though seeing a grown man in his underwear peeking out like a wild animal from the glass of a psych ward cell door is pretty scary. It's more about education, about a dose of reality, about consequences.

"We see these inmates come in so young, 18 years old, 19 years old," says Bright. "Once they're on the inside, we can't get involved emotionally because of our jobs, but if we can stop them before they get into trouble, that's what we want to do."

As Kaohi approaches parole, there's discussion about how to have him continue his involvement in the program once he's released. There are other inmates who serve as speakers for the program, but Kaohi was the first, the founder. The Corrections staff is also screening other inmates who might be able to talk to students, though that is a slow and careful process.

When he finishes up his presentation to the students, Kaohi looks each dead in the eye and points a crooked finger in their direction: "Now, you folks cannot say, 'Oh, I didn't know it was like that on the inside. I didn't know that's how it was.' Now you've seen. Now you know."

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