Scoops Casey, fixture in 'Miss Fixit' column

By David Waite
Advertiser Staff Writer

The Honolulu Advertiser's "Miss Fixit," Scoops Casey, had a gravelly voice and never hesitated to set callers straight on her gender, or help legions of regular folks navigate their way through bureaucratic entanglements.

CASEY

Casey told the story of Hawai'i's working people by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them long enough to gain an appreciation for what they did.

She shadowed a city bus driver, Fire Department emergency call-takers, a lifeguard and a construction inspector. She chucked 30-pound bags of rubbish into the back of a city garbage truck, rappelled barefoot down a rocky Wheeler Army Airfield gulch, ladled melted butter on popcorn at a movie theater snack bar, and scrubbed down cars as they entered the conveyor line at McKinley Car Wash.

She tried her hand at being a Junior Police Officer, an Ala Moana custodian, a letter sorter, a telephone lineman and a driver's license examiner. She set contra-flow cones out on Kapi'olani Boulevard and got fingerprinted by one of Honolulu's finest.

And she shared those experiences with Advertiser readers.

"She was way ahead of her time. She excelled at what had been a man's profession," said her son, Leo Casey. "She fought the good fight and tilted at windmills."

Born Tsuneko Oguri, Casey graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1938 at age 15 and immediately went to work for the Advertiser as a proofreader. She stayed at the Advertiser for the next 46 years.

"She had a column named 'Casey at Bat' and was the editor of the TV guide section and finally they gave her the Miss Fixit column," Leo Casey said.

She loved newspapers so much, she changed her name to Scoops Casey.

" 'Scoops' was a nickname somebody gave her while she was working at Ka Leo (the student newspaper) at UH," Leo Casey said. Her first husband, Brian Casey, was a political reporter for the Advertiser who went on to become a city councilman.

Casey began writing the Miss Fixit column in 1969, a column later renamed Ms. Fixit, which she wrote under the byline of Scoops Kreger following a subsequent marriage.

Longtime Advertiser entertainment writer Wayne Harada said Casey was a "live wire" in the newsroom and was a news junkie who loved her job.

"She was a conduit to help readers solve problems, like abandoned cars on their street or a problem-solver for folks befuddled by a neighbor's overgrown mango tree hanging in their yards," Harada said. "She loved helping folks and egged government officials to move and react and respond."

Harada said Casey was "gregarious and outrageous. ... She would always wear oversized fake eyelashes that fluttered with each smile. She donned rings, sometimes on four fingers, that twirled and sparkled. And often, especially at Christmas, her earrings glowed with battery-powered lights."

Wade Shirkey, now an editorial assistant at the Advertiser, was just starting his newspaper career as a copy boy when he met Casey.

"She was as soft inside as she was tough sometimes on the outside," Shirkey said.

He recalled talking to Casey once about a Hawai'i cold spell.

"She realized I had returned from college on the Mainland with only my clothes, and not so much yet as a blanket," he said. Casey was in charge of the Christmas Fund stories and got donations of blankets from readers. She saved one for Shirkey.

"She didn't tell me until much later that I was keeping warm in a blanket meant for someone far more needy than I," he said.

Chuck Turner, a former Advertiser labor writer, remembers his decades-long friendship with Casey.

"Oh, God, she was one of the world's greatest characters until she had her stroke (in 1984)," Turner said.

He remembered competing with Casey at risque crossword puzzles and the time she was taken off her Casey at Bat beat after she "injured her knee while using a hula hoop."

Private services are pending.

Casey is survived by sons Leo and Sean and three grandchildren.

Reach David Waite at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8090.