By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Television is touting a gaggle of new "reality" shows for 2004 — shows in which a group of people are thrown together, given a set of contrived obstacles and encouraged to be as sneaky and rotten to each other as possible. One of the cable networks has a show where people work together to build a dream house and then battle to see who gets to keep the place.

How uplifting.

Isn't real life hard and sad and confusing enough without simulated adversity and cultivated animosity to keep us, what, entertained?

This past year was so full of stories of people hurting one another, from large-scale warfare to the mean, petty things people do like stealing a musician's 'ukulele or a wheelchair ramp from a family's garage.

Thank goodness for the brave people who walk among us, those who strive for a higher way of being

human. They remind us that, even though we may have a host of sadness, disappointment and anger, we always have the choice to be kind, to live with dignity, to be useful.

Thank goodness for Kailua's Dorothy Smith, who waged an all-out campaign to save the life of a little boy from Bali who was born with a heart defect. Smith and her husband helped pay for the child's trip to the Loma Linda University hospital in California and accompanied the boy and his father on the trip. She raised money to help defray medical costs. Because of her kindness and tenacity, dozens of people, strangers, were inspired to send money to help pay for the boy's surgery. Not only did they send money (and sometimes just $20 or a book of stamps because that's all they could afford), but people also sent their aloha in letters to the child mailed to the hospital. The boy, Made Dwi Putra, was declared "fixed!" by doctors after open-heart surgery.

He returned to Bali to begin his new life as a healthy little boy.

Thank goodness for Rayleen Egami, who reminded us of the resilience of the human spirit. Rayleen, an orphan who was bounced around the foster-care system, attended four different high schools, but managed to get herself on the honor roll at every school she attended. She played high-school sports, wrote for her school paper, even got herself elected governor of the Youth Legislature. Rayleen left for college at Loyola Marymount last fall with finally a bit of security in her life: Dozens of individuals and agencies read about Rayleen's struggle to better herself and the lives of her two younger siblings and sent donations to a fund

to support her education. Rayleen's tenacity touched people, strangers, who reached out to her to say, "Keep going. For yourself, and for us. You give us hope."

Thank goodness for Faith Nakano, for her example of hard work, dedication and caring. She has been a nurse at Shriners Hospital for

61 years. In that time, she had 50 years of perfect attendance. Over her career, she cared for countless scared and hurting children and trained dozens of new surgeons. Though she's 80 now, she approaches her work with the same devotion she had when she first got out of nursing school. "I hate the word retirement," she says. "There's no word like that in my vocabulary."

Thank goodness for Leah Johnson and Pearl Featheran, two women who have become "the village" (as in "it takes a village to raise a child") on little Cleghorn Street in Waikiki. The two women take in dozens of children to their small apartments for homework help. They feed the kids out of their own pockets, provide after-school and weekend activities, even meet with the kids' teachers to make sure they're doing OK in school. It's easy to say, "Someone should be watching those kids," but

Leah and Pearl took that courageous next step and said, "We can look out for them. We can help."

And thank goodness for Afa Garrigan, Mauhe Moala and all the people in their lives who made them such decent and dignified young men. In the post-game chaos after Kahuku beat Saint Louis for the high-school Division I football championship, Saint Louis star kicker C.J. Santiago was down on his knees on the field. He made good on four field goal attempts in the game but missed his fifth, thus sealing Kahuku's win. Garrigan and Moala saw Santiago on the ground and immediately went to him, offered him words of encouragement and support. That moment was captured in an unforgettable photo by Advertiser photographer Eugene Tanner. When asked why they went to talk to Santiago when all around them was chaos and celebration, both Garrigan and Moala talked about respect and sportsmanship. Much to his credit, Santiago accepted the player's gesture with grace and said, "It's something I'll never forget."

Our world is so fraught with trouble and sadness. The reality is that some people find a light within themselves that pierces the darkness for all around them. Those are the stories to remember.

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