Maui teacher saves former student from wildfires

by HSTA

When Lahainaluna High science teacher Jackie Ellis was fleeing deadly Lahaina wildfires last week, she never imagined a chance encounter at a stoplight would mean saving her former student’s life.

In the frantic moments evacuating Lahaina with her two dogs in the car, she recognized the car of one her former students, Joa Navarro, at a stoplight and quickly picked him up, taking him out of harm’s way because his car was about to run out of gas.

“If it wasn’t for her, I would not have made it to my friend’s house, and I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the fire,” Navarro said.

Ellis’ escape story: ‘Guys, we gotta go. We gotta go now.’

Ellis lived in a Lahaina townhouse so close to her school, she could “see the L (the large symbol for the school) from my backyard on the mountain above the high school.”

On Tuesday evening, when the wildfires began rapidly spreading, one of her roommates came home from performing a storm watch on a boat in Lahaina Harbor and told her, “There’s a fire on the hill burning straight down. I think we should pack some bags.”

“We packed our things and loaded them into the car just to be ready,” Ellis said. “I thought, ‘OK, if we have to go somewhere else, I’m going to need clothes to teach in,’ so I grabbed my favorite teaching outfits.”

Ellis also threw her school keys into her bag. “In the midst of all of it, that’s where my brain went,” she recalled.

Ellis has two miniature Australian shepherd dogs, so she packed dog food, dog bowls, and put them in harnesses before leaving, worried that they’d get scared and run away in the fire.

As the smoke drew closer, she finally said, “Guys, we gotta go. We gotta go now.”

Ellis, her two roommates, and a visiting friend got into separate cars to drive to safety. They planned to meet at a friend’s house in Kahana, north of Lahaina.

“We started trying to go north, which would involve a right-hand turn out of my neighborhood. We are close to Front Street. Traffic wasn’t moving,” Ellis said.

“I’ll always remember that wind, the power in it,” she said. “There was more smoke and it got so dark from all the smoke. I couldn’t sit there. [I thought] what if they never open this road? What if we can’t get out?

“I started to see the embers flying by and that’s when I said, “OK, I’m done with Front Street,’” Ellis continued.

So she decided to go south instead, which had far less traffic, heading for safety at a friend’s place in Launiupoko.

Navarro’s car was very low on gas with no way to fill up his tank

Ellis’ former student, Joa Navarro, spent Tuesday doing boat prep work at his job at a sailboat charter company in Lahaina, a job Ellis had helped him get.

He and the other crew members had done some work on the boat that windy Tuesday, but found out the afternoon’s tourist boat rides were canceled because of high winds and rough conditions from Hurricane Dora passing south of the islands.

Navarro didn’t want to go back home to Kahana right away because he had barely any gas, and all the gas stations were closed because the power went out earlier in the day after high winds brought down power lines.

He went to a parking structure of an outlet shopping center in Lahaina and took a nap in his car, since traffic had snarled because of downed power lines.

“I got woken up around 4 o’clock-ish with smoke around me and all the (fire engine) sirens are going off, and I was like, ‘What the heck is going on?’ And I was like, ‘There’s a giant fire right there,’” Navarro said.

“So I drive out. I started to make a left to go north, and then I see Miss Ellis (in her car). She is flying past me the other way, and I was like, ‘Look at her, she has a plan.’ So I did a U-turn and started following her,” he added.

He caught up to her in stalled traffic at an intersection near the Lahaina McDonalds and, after waiting there for five minutes, pulled up next to her and “finally communicated to her that I had no gas, basically.”

They made a left onto Front Street and drove to King Kamehameha III Elementary School, where Navarro pulled over and parked his car.

“I told him ‘Get in, you’re part of this car now,’ and he grabbed a bag from his car and got in,” Ellis recalled.

“We decided ‘OK, let’s keep going south,’ because we didn’t want to go back into the fire,” Navarro said.

Navarro left his car right outside the school, which later was destroyed by fire.

“It was just a weird twist of fate that we ran into each other. It was crazy,“ Ellis said. “You could see all the smoke and all the blackness behind us, but it was weird because the sky was blue and sunny elsewhere.”

They eventually made it out of Lahaina, driving over downed power lines that had been covered so cars could drive over them slowly, but safely.

“It was like the biggest exhale of my life I’ve ever felt. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m moving at a normal car speed and I’m moving far away from this,’” Ellis recalled.

She dropped Navarro off at a friend’s house in Launiupoko and she went to her friend’s home in the same town to seek shelter.

From there, “I just watched my town burn,” she said.

“You couldn’t look away from it, but it broke your heart every second, just watching Lahaina burn, and being afraid for everyone,” Ellis recalled.

To this day, Ellis reflects on “all these little choices that I made” as the fire engulfed her town.

She said, “If I had kept trying to go north, would I have ended up having to flee to the water? If I hadn’t turned around, would I have found Joa because his car ran out of gas?”

‘Even before she saved my life, she was my favorite teacher’

Navarro credits Ellis for saving his life.

“If it wasn’t for her, I would not have made it to my friend’s house, and I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the fire,” he said.

“I’m really thankful that she let me get in the car that day, because I don’t know what I would have done. I would have just run out of gas in the middle of the road there,” he said. “I’m just really thankful for her.”

Navarro noted, “Even before she saved my life, she was my favorite teacher.

“I would go into her class during recess and lunch really frequently to just hang out and talk,” he said. “After all that time, we actually became good friends. I’ve looked up to her so much because she’s so smart and kind. She’s helped me through tons of different life problems and stuff in and outside of school, so it’s pretty funny that she was also the one to save me.”

Ellis teaches biology and marine science at Lahainaluna, known as the oldest public high school west of the Rocky Mountains, founded in 1831. She served as senior class adviser for the last several years.

She taught Navarro in one class after another through his high school years, from physics to marine biology to virtual school during the pandemic.

Navarro served as her teaching assistant in several science classes and graduated in May. He just flew to Utah Wednesday where he will attend the University of Utah and major in finance.

Ellis said, “I taught a lot of these kids for three or four years.This class is like my nieces and nephews. This class holds a special place in my heart. I love this class so much.”

Ellis’ home is uninhabitable; Navarro’s car miraculously survived the fire

Ellis, who owns her townhouse, says it’s uninhabitable with fire damage, no power, and no drinkable water.

“I’m not sure when I’ll be able to be back home or if that’s going to be possible,” she said.

For now, her homeowners insurance is paying for her to stay in a hotel, but most of her temporary housing insurance will get used up in the next week or so.

Ellis put her name on realtors’ lists to be connected with people who have places to rent. Eventually, she’ll have to pay her mortgage and homeowner association fees on top of paying for rent at another place.

She has started a GoFundMe campaign to help her cover expenses, and doesn’t know exactly what her living arrangements will be in the weeks ahead.

As for her former student’s car, “Joa’s car is pretty much untouched,” Ellis said. “The plastic license plate frame melted, but everything looks fine.”

While Ellis doesn’t know when she will return to teach at Lahainaluna High, which, like all four Lahaina public schools, remains closed through at least this week, she’s busy at work from her hotel room, continuing to care for her students and friends.

She’s helping other recent Lahainaluna graduates who’ve had to postpone college suddenly because their homes burned down or their parents lost their jobs because of the fires.

Ellis also created a spreadsheet with links to GoFundMe and other crowdfunding appeals for friends and families of students who’ve lost homes, businesses, and jobs in the wildfires — further proof that a devoted teacher’s work is never done when it comes to supporting her students and community.

Initial counts indicate at least 57 Maui educators have either lost their homes entirely in the fires or their homes suffered damage to the extent that they have to temporarily relocate. Another 44 teachers reported property damage from the fires. Since the flames destroyed King Kamehameha III Elementary School, all of the teachers there have lost their classrooms.

An HSTA member survey revealed 33 respondents willing to offer temporary shelter to colleagues, while another 13 offered long-term housing. More than 103 HSTA members on Maui said they were willing to volunteer to help colleagues in need. These figures are tentative and expected to change as more people are able to respond to our survey. These totals do not include school employees represented by other unions, such as education assistants, cafeteria workers, custodians and administrators.