Chaminade student perseveres

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

When Valasi Sepulona graduates today with 400 other Chaminade University of Honolulu students, it will be against all odds, says her volleyball coach, Glennie Adams.

"I always wanted to work somewhere in the police force," Valasi Sepulona said. Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser

Then, in Sepulona's second year of college, her mother died.

A lesser person would have given up, Adams said. But she sees something in Sepulona. On the volleyball court where she's won numerous awards. In her studies where she excels. With other students for whom she's become a role model. And in the year and a half when Sepulona rearranged her schedule so she could go to school in the morning and be free to take her mother for dialysis and cancer treatments in the afternoons.

"It's pride," Adams said. "She really doesn't want to fail. And Chaminade was the perfect fit for her because she received the individual attention she needed. There were many many people who at one point in time or another came in touch with her and didn't want her to fail, either."

"She's a role model for some of the members of the Samoan club, and her fellow students, for the way she uses her time wisely in doing her athletics and her academics," said Kapika Ahakuelo, campus adviser to the Samoan Club, which gave Sepulona its highest honor this year — taupou, or princess.

"She had a rough time, but she showed so much strength balancing her academics and athletics and pulled through. I'm not sure how many people could go through all that and still be strong."

On Saturday Sepulona will join other dancers from the Samoan Club to compete in the Fire, Knife and Cultural Dance Competition at the Polynesian Cultural Center in La'ie.

But she won't tell you the details of any of her triumphs. Far from it. She has forgotten the names of all the honors she's won in volleyball, and doesn't like to mention the volleyball scholarships that have helped pay her way through school.

"The only thing I knew was volleyball," Sepulona said. "That was my ticket back to school."

But it took her a while to find the path, she said. For four years after finishing high school she worked at a minimum wage job with Roberts Hawai'i, assisting with physically challenged children on the morning and afternoon school bus and earning the grand sum of "a hundred something" a month for a few hours of work each weekday.

"I always wanted to work somewhere in the police force," she said, "and my friends would tell me 'Wow, we can't imagine you working over here (at Roberts).' I think that helped with my decision (to return to school)"

At 21 she went back to school, taking out loans and applying for financial aid that first year. It was just about the time her mom started getting sick.

"I had to work my schedule around hers," she said. "And when I did my classes for each semester I made sure I'd take all morning classes because she started her dialysis at 1, and I would come home and pick her up. She had terminal cancer and her kidneys were failing."

Those afternoons were spent at the hospital as Sepulona waited for the slow process of blood-cleansing that kept her mother alive in those last difficult months. She filled the time with homework before taking her mother back home and then heading off to volleyball practice.

The day of her mother's funeral, Sepulona forced herself to play a scheduled game — and played one of her best — because she knew it was what her mother would have wanted.

"She loved sports, too. And she used to play basketball. So I never had to beg her to go play. Every time I would tell her, 'Mom, I'm going to go play volleyball,' she'd say 'Go.' "

Today's moment is Sepulona's. But it's also her mother's.

"All that happened made me stronger in everything I did in life, especially going back to school," she said. "Some people would give up after losing someone you love so much, but my mom always told me not to quit."

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.