Mother says teen pilot was ideal son

•	Crews recover body at Moloka'i plane crash site
	See video of the area surrounding the wreckage of the plane (RealPlayer required)

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

The distraught mother of the 17-year-old pilot whose wrecked plane was found on a Moloka'i mountainside yesterday said she thinks her son became confused when his aircraft was suddenly surrounded by clouds near the island's north shore on Saturday.

Chezray Hayes, who was making his first interisland solo flight, was reported missing Saturday; his body was recovered yesterday on Moloka'i. Here, he is shown with sisters, Keylee, 6, and Taliya, 9. Hayes family photo

"They notified us that they have his body," Mitchell Hayes said last night. "We're going to bring him back home as soon as we can."

About 40 family members held a prayer service for Chezray at the Hayes' Mililani home last night. The family had hoped that the Mililani High School senior could have somehow survived the crash. "Our prayer was just to bring him home," Mitchell Hayes said. "At least we have our boy back here and not left over there."

The discovery of the body ended an ordeal for the Hayes family that began Saturday when Chezray Hayes' Cessna 172 was reported missing. Hayes was making his first solo flight from Honolulu to Maui.

Natalie Hayes, an Aloha Airlines flight attendant and the daughter of a former Navy pilot, said her son would have turned around immediately if he knew he was headed into bad weather. But the boy likes to finish what he starts, and probably believed he could make it around Moloka'i on his first interisland solo flight to Maui, she said.

Natalie and husband Mitchell, a flight attendant with Hawaiian Airlines, had waited anxiously with their two daughters, Taliya, 9, and Keylee, 6, at their split-level Mililani Mauka home as a Maui Fire rescue crew inched down the cliff side toward the wreckage late yesterday.

The boy, who took his first student flight with his mother and an instructor Sept. 11, was described by his family and school officials as an "ideal son," a quiet youth with a sly sense of humor who took care of his younger sisters, cooked dinners, and regularly volunteered to do chores.

"He did everything for us, listened to us, followed directions," his mother said yesterday as she fought back sobs. "I took him on his introductory flight in September after talking to pilots I know, and we went up in the plane and they let him take the controls a bit, and when we landed he said he loved it."

The parents gladly paid for the flying lessons, and were rewarded with a cellular phone call from the sky whenever Chezray flew over the house with his instructors.

Chezray was planning on getting his pilot's licenses but also going to college to study marketing so he could fall back on something he loved if flying didn't work out, she said.

The boy's uncle, Arthur "Bubba" Hayes, one of several volunteers who went to Moloka'i to help with the search yesterday, said he flew into the area in a helicopter and found himself instantly engulfed in "pitch white" clouds. Hayes said the boy veered no more than a quarter-mile inland, and was less than 100 feet from clearing the ridge when the aircraft crashed.

Natalie Hayes said Chezray would have been flying by visual flight rules alone, and had not been trained to use instruments.

She and her husband praised the U. S. Coast Guard for its search efforts, and thanked Hawaiian Airlines for flying relatives from California to be with the Mililani family, as well as for organizing and supporting the volunteer search efforts.

In addition, Natalie Hayes said, there were many people, including the Maui Fire rescue team and scores of volunteers on Moloka'i, "who didn't even know my son but were out there risking their lives trying to save his."

Staff writer Curtis Lum contributed to this report.