By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Warren Higa knew the name of every person who came to say goodbye.

On Friday, Higa stood behind the counter at Makiki Shell, took phone calls, shook hands and accepted gifts of food ("for you folks' coffee break") from customer after tearful customer who, over the past 24 years, counted on his calm, able team to fix all manner of auto emergencies.

"The older ladies, the tutus, they're the ones. It's kind of touching for me. They're calling on the phone, crying. That's a large part of what the business was about. Yes, it's repairing cars, but it's really about people."

More than names, Higa knows his customers as friends. He knows where one man takes his daily walk, that another man likes to go fishing, that one woman has a 14-year-old dog that bites tires.

Higa started working at the station 34 years ago. Ten years later, he bought the business. In the past three years, Shell Oil Co. tripled his rent on the Beretania street location, so when the lease ran out, he and his wife Joann decided it was time to close up shop.

There was a time Higa thought he would be a social worker. He graduated from Maui's Baldwin High School in 1963 and went away to college in Denver. After two years, he joined the VISTA volunteer program and worked in a prison in Kentucky and with at-risk kids in California. He got his degree in social sciences from the University of Hawai'i and won a full-ride scholarship to graduate school in social work before deciding at the last minute to go in a different direction. He studied aircraft mechanics and engineering, took a job part-time at Makiki Shell and never left.

"This has been my life," Higa said.

In truth, Higa has been something of a social worker over the years at the service station. He has been the wise, compassionate caregiver when cars broke down and lives were in chaos. He was the steady, reliable person that finicky old folks could trust with repairs. Even on his last day of business, after he decided they wouldn't take appointments or do safety checks, when customers came in for their last-day-of-the-month safety checks, he said, "OK" and took care of them.

Higa's aloha letter to his customers said:

"We will miss the weekly hellos when you came for gas, the mangoes and manapua and much more that you shared, we will miss your grateful 'thank you' when we took care of your emergency, and we will even miss your frantic call for help when smoke billowed out from under your car's hood."

Over the years, Higa and his mechanics have just about seen it all.

There was the time that someone came in saying, "There's a meow in my car." A mechanic checked, and sure enough, he heard it, too. The car was put on the lift, the mechanic looked underneath, and there on the top of the gas tank was a tiny kitten. "It was so afraid," Higa remembers, "but it was OK."

"One time, this guy came in overheated," Higa said. "I took a look under the hood and I told him, 'oh, your problem is you don't have a radiator!' Someone had stolen his radiator."

Then there was the girl who pulled into the driveway and started beeping her horn at the attendants. "She told them to move the hose! Move the hose! She was a brand new driver, first time filling up, and she didn't know about the bell hose at full serve, you know the one that goes, 'ding-ding!' She didn't want to run over the hose."

Higa started at the station in the days before self-serve and convenience mini-marts. Beretania street ran in both directions back then, the police station was across the street, and the freeway was just under construction.

"Wonderful customers," Higa said, "wonderful people. But it's time to move on."

It's not the end of the story, though. Just the start of a new chapter. Everyone at the station has a new job to go to, all except for Higa's wife, Joann, who will be retiring after years of keeping the books. Joann does a little happy dance when she thinks of all the free time she's finally going to have and how she's going to spend it.

Higa and part of his team will be moving up to the Chevron Manoa Service Station by the Safeway on East Manoa Road. Higa will go from owner to manager. The owners of the Manoa station called him with the offer, which he gladly accepted. "Every time I thought about just retiring, I got so depressed," Higa said.

A customer, a woman in her 80s, helped him see the situation from a new perspective. "She told me, 'You still got so much going for you! You young yet!' And I'm thinking, young? I'm 58! But that looks different when you're 80. She gave me another view of this thing and oh, we had a good laugh together."

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