Friends and family of Star Simpson, the 19-year-old Maui woman accused of bringing a fake bomb into a Boston airport, continued yesterday to express surprise at her arrest, which generated nationwide attention.

"We're very proud of her. We have no reason to have any doubt about her," Simpson's father, Hugh, told the Maui News yesterday.

Simpson said his daughter was a brilliant student and athlete whose family would stand behind her, despite what officials said was a serious lapse of judgment, at best.

"If you have children, they sometimes make mistakes. But you don't abandon them. You help them work through it," Hugh Simpson said.

Star Simpson was charged with wearing what authorities called a fake bomb at Logan International Airport in Boston on Friday. She called the clothing she was wearing — which included a lit-up computer circuit board, wiring and the hand-written phrase "Socket to me" — a work of art.

Simpson, a sophomore at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was born and raised on Maui, where she attended the Montessori School in Makawao and later Hawaii Preparatory Academy on the Big Island. She was stopped at gunpoint on Friday in the airport as she went to pick up her boyfriend, who was arriving on an incoming flight.

"It's kind of crazy. I don't think it was that big of a deal," said her friend Tiffany Yee, 19, a fellow Maui resident attending MIT. "Poor thing, she got caught up in it."

Hugh Simpson told the Maui News that he spoke by telephone with his daughter Friday. After being released, she went to a public park "to stretch her arms because she had been in small rooms for hours and hours," he said.

Star Simpson was charged with possessing a hoax device. She is free on $750 bail.