Posted on: Thursday, October 21, 2004
Victim led social service agency
By Peter Boylan and David Waite
Advertiser Staff Writers
A fire at an 'Ewa home where two bodies were discovered Tuesday was deliberately set, a Honolulu Fire Department investigator said yesterday.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser Police said yesterday they were investigating the incident as two unattended fire deaths, meaning investigators found no evidence that anyone else was in the house at the time of the fire.
The City Medical Examiner's office will perform autopsies. The autopsies have been deferred while the medical examiner awaits the results of a fingerprint test and toxicology report, an official at the office said yesterday.
Family, friends and co-workers identified the two people in the house as Lino Vaivao, 55, and Brenda Mathias, 57.
The couple was living together, said Vaivao's sister, Bertha Vaivao. She said they met about 11 years ago.
Bertha Vaivao and Mathias were working at the social service agency Kokua Kalihi Valley, and "she told me she wanted to meet a Samoan man," said Vaivao, one of Lino's 15 siblings. "I told her, 'I know just the guy,' and I called my brother."
Lino Vaivao had just left the Army, where he served in the Persian Gulf War. He moved to Hawai'i, and the pair had been together ever since, Bertha Vaivao said.
Real estate records show the home at 91-1340 Ho'opi'o St. was owned by Mathias. The 14-year employee of Kokua Kalihi Valley was named co-executive director in September 2003. She had joined the nonprofit agency in 1990 as an assistant director and chief fiscal officer.
Workers at the comprehensive health and family services agency said they knew Mathias lived in 'Ewa, and became concerned when she failed to show up for a meeting yesterday morning.
State Rep. Dennis Arakaki, D-30th (Moanalua, Kalihi Valley, 'Alewa), who was on the agency's board of directors until about two years ago, said Mathias "was a quiet person, a very fine person, and this is just a tremendous blow to the agency."
Honolulu attorney Ed Kemper, a member of the agency's board, called Mathias' death "absolutely shocking."
"She worked there many years, and essentially worked her way up to chief financial officer and then to co-executive director," Kemper said.
Bertha Vaivao said her brother was someone she could count on, always concerned for her well-being. "I'll miss the way he'd keep calling me and checking up on me and my kids," she said.
Mathias had three daughters and a son by a previous marriage. Lino Vaivao had three girls living on the Mainland, Bertha Vaivao said.
Reach Peter Boylan at 535-8110 or pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.
Arson investigators found burning and charring patterns in all three bedrooms and the living room, consistent with use of a flammable liquid, an HFD official said. Investigators also found two 2 1/2-gallon plastic fuel containers in the rubble, one of them in the bedroom where the bodies were found.
A detective looks through the burned rubble of a house on Ho'opi'o Street in 'Ewa where two bodies were found, identified by friends and family as Lino Vaivao, 55, and Brenda Mathias, 57. Fire investigators said they had found evidence of arson.
