Family, health, music career destroyed by meth addiction
| • | Ice epidemic grows, overwhelms prisons |
| • | Ice finds its way into prisons in a number of ways |
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Drug treatment stretched thin by other prison costs |
By Johnny Brannon
Advertiser Staff Writer
Francis Kekona destroyed his heart smoking ice.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
And the day he came out of the hospital with a pacemaker, he was hitting the pipe again.
Francis Kekona, left, and Raymond Mathewson are recovering crystal methamphetamine addicts at the Laumaka Work Furlough Center.
"I was thinking 'I can't die, nothing can stop my heart,' " said Kekona, 32.
"I was completely out of control."
A talented musician from Maui, Kekona first tried the drug in 1989, when his band visited Honolulu to play.
Crystal methamphetamine was still new to Hawai'i, and he had never heard of it in his hometown of Wailuku. He didn't know what to expect when some new friends offered to "turn him on" to the drug.
"I took a couple hits my first day in Honolulu, and three days later I realized I was still up," he said.
A decade later he was in prison, after years of serious drug abuse and a vicious trail of violence.
He left behind three children and a woman he loved. He had seen good friends buried, fired his share of bullets, and watched Hawai'i change in ways most people never imagined. Now, he's on his way back to freedom, and planning a very different future.
But he can't ignore the past.
'They wanted more'
Kekona brought ice back with him to Maui after that first high, and friends there couldn't believe what it did to them.
"They wanted more," he said. "I was flying back Honolulu in about a week, picking up plenty ice."
For a while, Kekona was a big man on a small island, the one who had the connection and knew how to use the pipe.
"I was proud of myself for teaching the next person how to smoke," he said. "But the circle I was in, my close friends, we all became distant because of the drugs. I guess your mind, on the drugs, your worst character defects come out."
He had some bad ones of his own. He had beaten up plenty of rivals, and done time in the Koolau Boys Home for assault.
He dropped out of Maui High School in the 11th grade, and later went AWOL from the National Guard and was dishonorably discharged.
Music seemed like a way to be someone, go somewhere. But then ice took over, and Kekona's dreams changed from guitars and 'ukuleles to drugs and guns. The spiral speeded up when he moved to O'ahu.
"I was getting by, playing gigs at the hotels, stuff like that," he said. "But my intentions was to become somebody in the drug world, 'cause I seen the action in Honolulu and I wanted some of what was going on here. As time went by, watching the dope, I knew that thing was worth plenty money here."
He never became a big-time ice dealer. But he found that his old talents as a street brawler were useful in the trade. He started collecting drug debts as an enforcer for some dealers, while robbing other ones at gunpoint.
"I was confident," he said. "I was shooting at people, doing all kine stupid stuff. I was like one Robin Hood in the ice world," stealing the drug from dealers with plenty and smoking it with friends or giving it away to addicts short on money. He says he never stole from innocent victims.
Family affected
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
But innocents did suffer.
Francis Kekona, a recovering crystal methamphetamine addict, is also a father of three children. After his daughter was born in 1994, he quit using ice for a year, but started actively using again after a family argument following the birth of his son. He says he became abusive to his children and their mother, and ice became the most powerful force in his life.
He moved in with a young woman who didn't use drugs, and in 1994 they had a daughter.
"I said I was going quit," Kekona said. "I stopped smoking dope for one year, and through that whole year I thought, yeah, I can do 'em. I was clean, came nice and healthy."
The couple had a second child, a son. But then a family argument turned things upside down again.
"I jumped back into the dope, and from that point on, that was my excuse all the time," he said.
"I used to be real abusive to her, to my kids."
Ice, he said, became the most powerful force in his life.
"The dope was unreal," he said. "I used to kind of like worship the dope. For years, I chose the dope over my kids, over the rest of my family."
The relationship was on and off, and he was in and out of jail for domestic abuse. The children saw a lot of it, and more.
Kekona thinks hard about the time he shot at a man in front of his son. As Kekona then ducked for shelter in case the man was armed, he yelled to the boy to ask which way the man was moving, and his son responded with directions.
"I wasn't thinking of the safety of my son at that time," he said. "I used to think I could protect my kids from anything. But during that time, somebody had to protect my kids from me. I nevah thought I was unsafe for my kids. I thought I was protecting them. I thought, 'if somebody hurts my kids I going kill 'em.' "
The couple had a third child, but things weren't right. There was too much ice between them.
"I knew already that the 'I love yous' coming from her were out of fear," Kekona said. "She tried to hang in there all the years of being abused."
Finally, his heart gave out.
"I was so into the dope scene, I didn't want to sleep, I nevah like miss anything, and my heart couldn't take it," he said.
Doctors implanted a pacemaker in his chest. His heart won't beat without it.
"People were like, 'Brah, you better slow down,' and my family cried in the hospital," he said. "I was telling myself I'm finished."
He went to inform close friends that he was done with ice. But it didn't work out that way.
"They were passing the pipe around, and I was watching them," he said. "And the day I came out of the hospital with a pacemaker, I smoked. I was high as a kite, and as day one and day two went by, everything was the same. I started thinking in my head, 'Ah, no need worry, I get one pacemaker, which keeps beating my heart.' "
As the second chance at life went up in smoke, his illegal activities continued, and so did problems with the law.
"I basically thought I was working hard for the money for my family," he said.
But it took some time for his crimes to catch up with him.
A federal gun charge was dropped when the only witness was stabbed to death by someone else.
The gun he used in the shooting his son witnessed is somewhere at the bottom of Poka'i Bay.
Over the years, seven close friends died in drug-related incidents.
Kekona's own bill came due after he kidnapped a man connected to a drug debt, then kept him locked in the trunk of a car for a few days while payment was demanded and dealers considered leaving him dead in a cane field.
The man eventually escaped while the car was unattended, and Kekona was prosecuted on kidnapping, robbery and firearms charges.
When the dust settled, he was sentenced to a prison term of 3 1/2 to 10 years.
But even prison didn't stop his ice addiction. Inside the Halawa Correctional Facility, the drug was readily available to those with the right connections, he said.
"I got high almost every day," Kekona said. "If I wasn't smoking, I was taking pills."
Doing time in Halawa was no big deal, he said. There were friends he had been incarcerated with as a teenager, and he had relatives with tough reputations in Hawai'i's prison system.
"I was comfortable in prison, and that's the worst thing to be, I think," he said.
Where change began
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
He was later transferred to the Waiawa Correctional Facility, and that's where, he says, things began to change.
Kekona puts his thoughts into a journal at Laumaka Work Furlough Center. He has a restaurant job through a prison work furlough program while he continues counseling, and awaits a parole hearing later this year.
Waiawa is the system's primary substance-abuse treatment facility, with space for about 350 inmates.
It was there, Kekona said, that he first began to really think about how his life had spun so far out of control, and the reasons he had made such bad decisions.
As his treatment progressed, he was assigned to a special project: teach an organized class of inmates the fundamentals of reading music and playing the 'ukulele. He was instructing others again, but this time it wasn't about ice, and he was proud to do something positive.
After completing the treatment program, Kekona says he's determined to never return to his old ways. But he knows the risks of addiction.
"As far as my disease, I not cured," he said. "Every day is one battle for me."
What keeps him going, he said, is the hope of regaining the trust of his children. His daughter asks about him, he said.
"She's the oldest one. She saw a lot and she knows a lot," he said. "She wants to know if daddy's safe, and that's one sad thing to think about, if your kids got to think like that about you. She has scars. The kind I cannot see."
He hopes their mother was made stronger by the pain she endured, so that she'll never tolerate any abuse in a relationship.
He knows that seeking forgiveness for all the trouble he has caused is a lot to ask, and that he'll have to earn every inch of his way back into society.
He has already started, taking a restaurant job in Waikiki through a prison work furlough program while he continues in counseling, returns to custody after work and awaits a parole hearing later this year. His movements, activities, and plans for the future are closely monitored, and officials say they won't hesitate to lock him down if he causes trouble.
But so far, he's taking the right steps. And he's getting help from a state that's suffering.
