LOVE STORIES
Couple breaks the mold of teenage parenthood

By Tanya Bricking Leach
Advertiser Staff Writer

Stacie Lynn Myers and Kaikala Henele Rosa would like to prove the world wrong.

Stacie Lynn Myers and Kaikala Henele Rosa with their daughter, Kealohilani Lynzee Myers-Rosa. The couple became teenage parents and were married Aug. 1, the 10th anniversary of when they met. Rosa family photo

That wisdom can come with youth.

And that teenage pregnancy doesn't have to ruin your life.

They met 10 years ago, when Myers was 13 and Rosa was 15.

Rosa had just gotten his driver's license, and he put a lot of miles on his 1983 maroon Toyota pickup making the drive from Waipio Gentry to her house in Kane'ohe.

Early on, there wasn't a whole lot of "dating" going on, but there were lots of phone calls. (So many that Rosa's mom would sometimes interrupt late-night calls by yanking the cord out of the wall.)

But the young lovers got carried away. And just before Meyers' sophomore year at Castle High School, she worried she might be pregnant.

She told him she thought she was pregnant. He bought her a pregnancy test, and it confirmed her suspicion.

"I was thinking, 'This guy's gonna bolt. He's gone,' " Myers said. "Instead, he said, 'We've got to figure out what we're going to do.' "

They decided to stick together and have the baby.

"I told her, 'Life is not going to end if we have a child,' " Rosa remembers. " 'We might as well strive for the best.' "

They waited until halfway through the pregnancy to tell their parents the news, but the lessons of youth came quickly.

The first lesson: Finish school. Even after Kealohilani Lynzee Myers-Rosa was born, Myers and Rosa were determined to further their education. They took turns working two jobs to support the family while the other went to college. Myers worked as a teacher's aide and a supermarket clerk while Rosa went to college. And Rosa worked at the University of Hawai'i and United Parcel Service while she earned her degree.

Myers became a teacher at Nuuanu Baptist Church Preschool, Rosa became an electrical engineer working on an unmanned underwater vehicle for Marine Autonomous Systems Engineering, Inc., and they both cheer at Little League games for their daughter, who's 7.

So, in their early 20s, Myers and Rosa already knew a lot about what it takes to be a family.

But Rosa's great-aunt from Las Vegas, known in the family as "Auntie Poni," probed at what was missing.

She was visiting and said she wanted to come back to Hawai'i before she died, but she needed a reason to come back. She wanted an invitation to their wedding. She even wrote down her address before she headed back to Vegas.

That sparked something in Myers and Rosa, and they decided to make their relationship official.

"I always told him (that) just because we mixed up our timeline a little, it doesn't mean we can't have a big wedding," Myers said.

Rosa, who still drives the same truck he had in high school, balked at a lavish affair.

So they compromised and invited 250 people (instead of the original guest list of 600) to their Aug. 1 wedding in front of the giant aquarium at the Neptune Restaurant in the Pacific Beach Hotel in Waikiki. It marked 10 years since the day they met and included things they both love — an aquarium, because of the groom's fascination with fish; a lion dance, because the bride's parents had a lion dance at their wedding a quarter-century ago in the same reception hall; and a hula performed by their daughter.

Neither wants to glorify teenage pregnancy. They say it was definitely hard, and Myers even talked to high school classes about the consequences of being intimate too soon. But Myers (now Stacie Lynn Myers Rosa) is proud to call herself a success story.

"I like to see myself kind of as, I broke the mold," she said. "I didn't just fall into the stereotype of teenage pregnant girl."

And this step seals the relationship, the groom said.

"It feels different as a married person," he said. "I feel more attached to her, I guess. Parenthood, I think it set me straight. It's actually a blessing. And the wedding really set it home that we're together."

Tanya Bricking Leach writes about relationships. If you'd like her to tell your love story next, write to tleach@honoluluadvertiser.com, call 525-8026 or mail your photo and details to Love Stories, The Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110,Honolulu, HI 96802.