For young people returning to the islands, family helps ease the cost burden

LAHAINA — Ivy Navarro had barely started her new job as a counselor for Lahaina Intermediate School when the Aug. 8 wildfire destroyed much of the town she grew up in. 

Suddenly she was in a position to help kids and families like hers through one of the toughest times they’d seen.

“When I took the job, I knew I wanted to be there for the students and support them with whatever they need,” Navarro said. “I just wanted to get close to them, get to know them and make sure that they know that I’m there when they need someone to talk to.”

Navarro knows she’s fortunate to be back in West Maui. Growing up in a multigenerational home filled with extended family, she figured there wasn’t going to be much space for her when she got back from college. Two sisters moved out because there wasn’t enough room. Other relatives have packed up and left for Las Vegas.

“There’s just no room, so it’s pretty hard,” Navarro said. “Obviously with the housing situation, after the fire it got worse.”

So how have people like Navarro who grew up in the islands been able to move back home? And will those who have left but long to return ever get the chance to do it, especially after the fires?

“It’s so hard to move back home — if I ever move back home — because it’s one of those things, it’s so expensive to move back home now,” said Andy Mangiduyos, a Lahaina-grown chef who runs Kalei’s Kitchenette in San Diego. “You’re priced out of paradise pretty much.”

A BOOST FROM FAMILY

Navarro, a former state champion wrestler and standout student at Lahainaluna High School, always knew she wanted to come home to live on Maui after college but said it was never a certainty that she could.

Navarro’s family home, which is owned by her uncle, at some points housed as many as 20 family members when Ivy was growing up — it did not burn in the fire, but her cousin’s home was lost. Her cousin and the cousin’s immediate family have moved into the family home. Her sisters Irish Navarro, 29, and Ira Navarro, 23, live on the Mainland.

Their parents worked multiple jobs as they grew up — their mom had two housekeeping jobs at hotels and their father would work at two or three restaurants at a time. When Ivy Navarro was home for summers in college, she would work two jobs — one in a retail store and another as a cocktail greeter at Duke’s restaurant.

When asked what the biggest challenge is to living here long term, Navarro did not hesitate.

“Probably needing more than one income just to survive here,” she said. “Like, I’m currently living on one paycheck — I don’t think it’s enough.”

Navarro graduated from Lahainaluna in 2017, then attended Southwestern Oregon Community College in Coos Bay, Ore. After finishing her associate degree in 2019, she moved on to Providence College in Great Falls, Mont., and graduated in 2023 with a health and physical education degree. Along the way, she finished fifth in the overall national tournament for women’s wrestling while competing for Southwestern Oregon and then was twice a national runner-up in the NAIA for Providence College. 

She planned to be a P.E. teacher, but when a counselor job at Lahaina Intermediate was available in the fall, she jumped at the chance to fill the opening. She has also been a key part of the Lunas wrestling coaching staff.

One factor that makes it possible for the 25-year-old Navarro to live here is her fiancé, Christian Balagso — the couple live together on the Balagso family’s pig farm in Olowalu. Navarro and Balagso, high school sweethearts, are scheduled to be married on July 12 and they expect more than 300 people to attend. Along with saving for their wedding, they’re hoping to buy their own place someday.

“I was just looking at Zillow just for fun and the prices are crazy,” Navarro said. “I think it will probably take me years until I can own my own house. Maybe like 20 years or longer. We’re saving up. I want to stay in Lahaina, but losing all those homes it’s going to be a little bit tough to stay on the west side. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who is in this situation.”

For now, Navarro is just grateful for the chance to be back in the place she grew up.  

“I’m blessed because I know some people want to stay on the west side, but they can’t — the housing here and the expenses,” she said. “I have family on this side able to take me in, because if not I would probably be on the Mainland.”

Family support and a timely opportunity also opened the door for 2016 Moloka‘i High School graduate Kaimana Kahale to come back to live on his home island. 

Kahale, a former Maui Interscholastic League eight-player football standout under his father and Farmers head coach Mike Kahale, went on to attend Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., where he played football for three seasons and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in History in 2020. He landed a fellowship at the University of Utah and started a master’s program in education but postponed it during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Coming back during the uncertainty of the pandemic, he decided to stay on the island and put his efforts into “helping this community that has molded me.” He obtained his license in special education at Leeward Community College, got certified in social studies and is now the seventh-grade social studies teacher at Moloka‘i Middle School. 

He and his wife Misty Kahale, an aspiring doctor who attended Willamette University in Oregon, are renting a small Kaunakakai studio managed by her family. Kaimana Kahale said the space may be “a little bit more challenging” as their family grows — the couple is expecting their first child — but for now, it works for them. 

“We’re fortunate to have family to fall back on in terms of just support, in terms of just temporary housing,” he said. 

On Moloka‘i, the challenges are less about the fire and more about the higher costs of groceries, utilities and interisland transportation. Kahale said the factors determining whether people his age can come home to stay are affordability and living situations, the chance for a career “right off the bat” and the types of opportunities on the Mainland. 

“I’m still young too, myself, so I’m like trying to figure that out myself,” Kahale said. “What is the best way for me to stay here? What is going to keep me and my young family afloat during these challenging times? But I think it’s the commitment to those that have really gotten us to where we are, at least for me and my family, that has rooted us here.”

He tells his students that they don’t always have to leave the island to be successful.

“It’s not like you have to go on a plane and go away for four years to the Mainland to be successful,” Kahale said. “If you have the means and the will and the desire and the supports, you know, you could make that happen here. It’s going to be hard, but you know, a lot of things in life are hard.”

THE MAINLAND IS JUST ‘WHERE I WORK’

When Lahaina chef Mangiduyos first moved to California, it felt like a far cry from a childhood spent cruising down Front Street and along the beaches of the west side.

“From a local boy standpoint, you didn’t want to move out of the island, right? Because that’s all you know,” Mangiduyos, a 2003 Lahainaluna alum, said by phone last week. “When I got moved out here, it’s just totally, you know, like shell-shock for me, like a different ballgame. There’s life outside of Hawai‘i.”

Mangiduyos, who earned his degree from the University of Hawai‘i Maui College’s culinary program, was working as a sous chef at the Hyatt Regency Maui when the 2008 recession forced him to leave his island home. Facing the prospect of being laid off or transferring to a job on the Mainland, Mangiduyos chose a position at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego. 

He bounced between Hyatt resorts in Hawai‘i and California before landing in San Diego in 2018, when he started Kalei’s Kitchenette, a catering business and now brick-and-mortar restaurant named after his firstborn daughter.

The dishes of garlic chicken and kalua pork that the 39-year-old chef serves up remind him of the no-frills plate lunch spots he grew up loving. He dreams of coming home one day and expanding his business — which is unaffiliated with Kalei’s Lunchbox on Maui — and putting some of the proceeds toward scholarships for Lahainaluna students. 

That’s a dream made more complicated after Mangiduyos’ family lost their Wahikuli home in last year’s fire. His parents, who shuttled from hotel to hotel after the fire, are still coping with the loss, said Mangiduyos, who launched donation drives in the wake of the fire and collected 484 boxes of supplies like clothes and canned goods. He added that their family has gotten calls from people wanting to buy their land, but as proud property owners, they’re determined to hold on to it. 

“That’s your family home,” he said. “It’s one of those things that you would never sell.” 

Some people go to great lengths to keep their ties to Hawai‘i while holding a career on the Mainland, like Kanekoa Texeira, who splits time between Moloka‘i and Georgia.

Texeira is the fourth Major League Baseball player ever from Maui and this season he rose to the AAA level as a manager in the Atlanta Braves organization at the age of 38. 

Texeira grew up in Kula before attending Kamehameha Schools Kapālama, where he met his future wife in seventh grade and won a state title on Maui as a junior in 2003 at Maehara Stadium. He was a 22nd round draft pick of the Chicago White Sox in 2006 out of Saddleback Junior College in California.

His pitching career spanned six MLB organizations and consisted of 49 games and a 1-1 record in 2010 and 2011 with the Seattle Mariners and Kansas City Royals. Texeira has risen like a rocket ship in the Braves organization’s coaching ranks since he retired as a player after a AAA season with the Atlanta organization in 2016.

He lives on Moloka‘i in the offseason with wife Leoho‘onani and their three young children, who also spend summers in Gwinnett, Ga., to be with their father as he works.

“You know, the Mainland to me is just work. Do I like leaving home? I don’t. Is it easy to leave home? Never,” Texeira said by phone last month after a game in Roanoke, Va. “Do I wish there was a professional baseball team in Hawai‘i? Heck yeah, then I’d never have to leave. The Mainland to me is work. It’s where I work.”

When Texeira thinks about how long it has been since he left Maui County as a full-time resident — 20 years — he shakes his head. When he visited Maui recently, a lot of it was new to him. The Texeira family has lived on Moloka‘i for the last three years, partly because “things there still remind me of our culture, how I grew up, being in the country, just being able to have peace.”

His wife, daughters Kealohiokailiwai, 6, and Kailanaokealaula, 3, and son Kānehūnāmoku, 3 months, all visit dad for two months over the summer. The short span that he gets with his young family on the Mainland is treasured family time.

Texeira’s mother and father also come with the family to visit at the start of each season to help get the children settled. 

“I think the positive part is they get to see outside of the islands,” Texeira said. “They get to experience kids’ museums, big gyms, hotels, they travel with me to hotels, they get to ride a bus to the field sometimes, meet a lot of people, see the stadiums, see the fans, fireworks. It should help them if somehow they become athletes and want to play in bigger arenas, I think my kids should be OK with that. They’ve been through it for awhile. 

“I think the negative part is just being away from my wife. We’ve been together so long, always together. You know, being away is tough, but you get in this business, you find the one that can handle what you do and I found the one. So, we make it work.”

*This story is Part 3 in a limited series called “Crossroads” that takes a look at how last year’s wildfires and the high cost of living are affecting young people’s decisions to leave or stay in Maui County. Part 3 focuses on recent returnees and those who’ve made the Mainland their home. Read Part 1 and Part 2.