 I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou School Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about inspiration, welcoming adversity, and building a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is the president and CEO of our Visitor Aloha Society of Hawaii, or VASH. She is Jessica Lani-Rich, and today we are going Beyond Aloha. Hey, Jessica, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Hi, Rusty. It's great to see you, and thank you so much for this invitation. I appreciate it. Jessica, you have been making such a huge positive impact in our community, and it's an honor for me to have you on the show, but before we get into everything, can you first share a bit about your background? Absolutely. My background is I majored in communications in college, got my BA degree from San Francisco State University, and went on to do my graduate work towards my master's at the University of Hawaii, and then about 20 years ago, I was a radio announcer 22 years ago for a news director still involved in communications, and I saw a TV show, a news clip, where this wonderful nonprofit organization was helping visitors, and I thought that's really interesting, and I called them up, and at that time I was also the public relations manager for the Bishop Museum, and I volunteered to be on the board, and then I became the temporary president and CEO, and that was 19 years ago. In my background, after I did that, I went on to Baltimore, Maryland to get my certification as a critical incident responder, which means I'm trained and certified to respond to extensive training in critical incidents, which are incidents that people don't expect, and then I also have my certification as a Stephen minister with the First Presbyterian Church at Coal Out. Wow, that's some interesting stuff that your background, I love hearing that, Jessica, and I want to ask you about your TV show. You have the Inspire You and Me TV show. I saw your episode with the coach Timmy Chang, coach Robin Amol. Tell me about what you love about your Inspire You and Me show. What I love about the Inspire You and Me show is that one of the things that you and I have in common, Rusty, is that we both like to inspire people, only we have taken different paths in a way. What I love is to talk to people like UH Head Football coach Timmy Chang and his player, and hear their backstories about how they overcame adversity, and also how they not just are their role models to inspire other people. I never met a coach Robin Amol before, absolutely loved her, didn't realize that she was also a mom, and here she is, you know, a head coach as well. The backstories are absolutely fascinating. And the title of my show, Inspire You and Me, is truly what it's about. I hope that I inspire you, you inspire me, and together we make a better world together. Well, you are definitely doing that for sure, Jessica, I love it. And I want to ask you, if you can share with everyone what Vash is. Absolutely. And I hope that you don't mind that before I do that, I do want to thank the chairman of the Restaurant Association, Ryan Tanaka, for introducing me to UH Head Football coach Timmy Chang, and also coach Robin. But getting back to your question, what Vash is, is we are a non-profit organization, and all we do is specialize in helping visitors in crisis. And that could be anything from a theft on the beach, a car break in, medical emergency, missing person murder. In critical incidents, which I told you is my area of specialty. And that is when something totally unexpected happens when someone is on vacation. I specialize in visitors. Visitors have special needs, but our mission is to turn a negative experience into a positive as much as we can. And to send our visitors home who have had a very unpleasant experience with Aloha and feeling loved. Jessica, it's so important because, like you said, you know, you're there helping people who have a bad experience on their visit here. And it's so critical because you're trying to really make sure that it's a big positive memory overall from their visit here. And maybe just the caring that you and your volunteers show to them, right? Absolutely. And I do want to mention that we are basically a volunteer organization and thanks to our volunteers. Now, our volunteers, we have different levels of situations that happen. Our volunteers will take care of the thefts on the beach, the car break-ins. And then we go to the more serious incidents. And we have volunteers who visit people in the hospital. And now you see, we also have volunteers who do special events. And there you see some of our wonderful volunteers volunteering for the visitor industry charity walk. And they are such wonderful people, people who give their time to help others. And there's two more of our special events volunteers, Erica, and also another one of our volunteers as well. Well, Jessica, how does somebody become a volunteer? And I mean, can you what specifically do they do? I mean, is there some training that's involved as well? Absolutely. We have four hours of training. Usually it's not at the Hawaii Convention Center or a major hotel. We have a training coming up in the summer and I'm in the process of finalizing the location. And we also and they learn about all the different aspects of visitors, the different types of visitors, the different situations. We also have speakers come in from the Honolulu Police Department, from the Council for from EMS. And then we have our long time volunteers speak to them. Once they become a volunteer, then we have mentors, volunteer mentors who work with them. One of my top volunteers resting is the former mayor of Laguna Beach, California. His name is Robert Gentry. And when he retired here, he's been a volunteer for us for about 19 years. Now, he works with me on the critical incidents. We don't ask the regular volunteers to come out to a tragedy. That is your question. Yeah, that's great to hear. And Jessica, I was so happy when I saw that you were featured on the cover of Midweek and, you know, it just brings so much more awareness to our community about what Vash does here in Hawaii. What are your thoughts? Well, first of all, I was really humbled that I was even asked to be on the cover because the work that we do with Vash, Rusty, is very humbling experience. You know, we show up when visitors are having a bad day and it's our job to turn it into a good day. What I loved about the doing this story for Midweek is that I want our residents to know that dealing with visitors in crisis, in trauma, is also another form of aloha. And a lot of people tell me and tell my volunteers, oh, I never heard of the visitor aloha society. What do you do? How come I've never heard about you? So for us at Vash, having that information go out, informs the public. There are all types of aloha and we are also a part when we're there to show up. You know, I'm just going to share this. It's a one-minute story. I remember somebody that I helped literally 12 years ago and every Christmas, and it was a visitor who fell off a hiking trail, but she was fine. It was a small hike, entered her leg. I was at Straub. I spent the whole day with her, kind of forgot about her, moved on to my next 100 cases after that. Do you know that her husband, every single Christmas, sends thank you note? Just because I spent an afternoon holding her hand because she was alone, letting her know we care, we're going to get through this, her husband came here for a business meeting. And it meant the world to her. And I'm touched that they still remember that. Well, that's, I mean, I love hearing things like that. These little things make big differences and just you showing the aloha, you caring, you being there. You just never know how it's going to impact other people. And Jessica, I want to ask you about my books because like you said earlier, I'm trying to inspire the world. You're trying to, we're trying to inspire the world together. And what's something that stood out to you in my books? What I, first of all, I love your book. I haven't read the second one, but I did read the first one. And I, what I love about your book is your philosophy, your philosophy about, are you going to be a victim or a victor? And everyone has those choices. And I've seen it over the hundreds of visitors that we have assisted. If I can tell you a quick story about the Richardson's because this goes into your book when you talk about a victim becoming a victor, not too long ago. Actually a month or two ago, the Richardson family from Baltimore, near the Baltimore area, they came out here and the husband died on a hiking trail, the Pillbox hiking trail. It was the daughter's 30th birthday. They were victims. You talk about victims in your book. What happened with the Richardson's is that we were called when I say we, my Vash volunteer, Bob Gentry and I were called to the Lonnie High Rep Center where the body, they had medevaced the body. And we stayed for several hours with the wife of 37 years and the daughter. OK, they are heavy duty victims. Think about it. You're on vacation or you're the daughter at your 30th birthday and you lose your father. It is horrible. They could have left Hawaii in a bitter mood. They did not. We took care of them for an entire week. We stayed with them, like I said, that day. We helped them with memorial services. We met them at the Arizona Memorial. They left here feeling loved and aloha. And now we shift into your book and what you say about victim because Victor's, the Richardson's, both Mrs. Richardson and the daughter, Sam, said to us when they left, we feel loved. We feel cared for. There is no other place in the world if our father or if her husband were to pass away that they would have wanted it to happen. Then in Hawaii, they became victorious. They couldn't change what happened. But what they did feel was the aloha. So when you talk about the victim and Victor's, I think immediately of the Richardson's and thank you for that. Well, Jessica, you mean so the mom is Arlene Richardson and the daughter is Samantha, right? And yes, you. Yeah. I saw that story. I mean, that's that's amazing. And I love that you brought up the victim versus Victor mindset. And when you were helping Arlene Richardson and her daughter, Samantha, how how quickly did their mindset shift from victim to Victor? It's not instant, rusty. I think it's a whole process that happens and in their case. And they're still, first of all, they're reading the loss of the most important man in their life. And so, you know, they they cried for hours and hours and days. But I think what happened is towards the end of the week, when we were constantly in communication, they decided together, our dad is in heaven. Our daddy left here on a wonderful day. It took time. I think that in rusty, the victim to Victor process that you so eloquently describe in your book is it it's a different timeline for everybody. In their case, I would say it was less than a week because they left here and left less than a week and they felt Aloha and they felt like victors. So every person is different. I'm not going to say, oh, it's definitely a week or it's definitely an hour. It's your timeline and it's your choice to be what you describe in your book, a victim for victim or Victor. Yes, no, that's it definitely is a process and you're so right about, you know, it depends on the individual. And I want to ask you about another visitor that I saw a story about. She was visiting from the UK, Eileen Thompson, and then her husband died while here on Oahu. Yes, sadly, they were on a cruise and her husband passed away while they were at a major attraction and she was all alone. And so we sent our van. I have when things happen, I manage the island of Oahu when it comes to visitors in crisis or distress. And so as soon as we get a call if I can't make it or if someone else can't make it, we sent our shuttle to pick her up. I put her up in a hotel here in Waikiki and we helped her through the whole process of taking care of her husband of communicating with the family back home. And this is another situation where she left here of feeling cared for, of mission accomplished when we could change that frown into a smile. That's our role then mission accomplished, you know, and it takes time. You know, people aren't going to get over the grief overnight. It could even last a year or two year. But their mindset that you so eloquently describe is in that Victor mode. And some of them choose to be in the victim mode. It's their choice. That's why Jessica, chapter one in my first book is the choice is yours. I want people to know that they have a choice. And some people feel like they're stuck or they're complacent. But, you know, I want them to know that, no, you can you can make a choice to be positive, you can make a choice to be negative. So it's so important for what you're doing to help these people, these visitors. And there was also three visitors, three boys from California that went to the beach and then they got their cash and credit cards and ID stolen. Tell me about that experience. Yes, because as I mentioned, we deal with all sorts of situations at bash. And I can tell you this, no situation is too small. If they feel the one thing that all of our cases have in common, rusty is a sense of loss. They have lost something. It may be something. It may even be a woman who loses her lipstick and oh, my gosh, I lost my lipstick. That's terrible. You know, so we'll give her an ABC gift card or a Macy's card. Go get your lipstick and she's happy. Whatever the loss is, we're there to help. Now, in the case of the three boys, OK, they're here to celebrate. They graduated from high school. Their parents gave them a gift. Now, all three of their dad said, whatever you do, do not take your items to the beach and leave them unattended. What did they do? They took all of their items to the beach, left it unattended. They were embarrassed to call their dad who told them, do not do that. So they came to our office and we felt bad because they were, you know, celebrating their high school union. We gave them gift cards. We haven't called their parents. We supported them. Anything that they needed, transportation. And they left here. They left their office with smiles, mission accomplished. So, yeah, that's the good. So local businesses, they're how are they helping? You said like they're they're providing gift cards. So what else are they doing to help you? Well, it's it's really different. It depends on the situation. We are mostly funded by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. We're also funded by HLTA, Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association, Ruthie Haneman, the Kosasa Foundation is wonderful. In terms of local businesses, it's usually a case by case basis. For example, if someone wants to go to an attraction, I'll pick up the phone. I'll call the attraction. Can you help these people out? All they wanted was whatever the attraction is. Usually the answer is yes. But I can tell you this, I only ask businesses if sometimes that could have been prevented. Now, what do I mean by that? Sometimes we have people who come here and like a woman will leave her purse in a convertible and walk away for an hour and come back and expect that purse to be there. That's a situation that could have been prevented. So we'll do something for them. But I'm not going, you know, it's it's really a case by case situation. Yeah, got it. Now, Jessica, tell me about former San Jose police detective Bruce Wiley. I mean, his wife died suddenly while they were on vacation here. What what happened? Yes, his wife. You know, this is interesting because this is a homicide detective and he's used to dealing with death. Recently retired in his wife or here on vacation. There he is sitting down and his wife went to the restroom. Boom, died of a heart attack instantly on vacation. He was grief stricken because I had assisted the San Jose Police Department on another case of drowning a year previously. They called me up. They said, please take care of Bruce Wiley. He said, absolutely. We met with him. We helped him through the grieving process. I'm also a bereavement counselor and and also with Memorial. A way to get his wife back to to where he came from for the funeral. And we're still in touch with him. He was very grateful for our services. And when he got home, he made a major donation. We never ask anything for anything from anybody. All we ask is that you take care of yourself. And, you know, you realize that what you're going through is temporary. That's what people need to realize. Whatever adversity you're going through, it's not going to be forever. That's saying in the Bible, this too shall pass. It will. And that's what I kind of gently remind people. It's not going to be forever. You will get over this in time. If, as you said, that Victor mentality. So we're still in touch with Bruce, love Bruce. He's a wonderful man, and he's planning on coming back here. I think he's going to remarry. He told me he's a new girlfriend now. That also shows people resting are resilient, the resiliency of our people. That's what I've seen over the years. Well, his story right there just is proof that that really works. I mean, to change the mindset of, you know, that one bad experience, but to really make sure that, you know, Hawaii is Hawaii. And then the whole experience overall is fantastic for them. And, and Jessica, I want to ask you about the father daughter who was traveling from Seattle, trying to go to American Samoa, but was stopped over in Oahu because COVID happened and then American Samoa shut down where they you couldn't have any flights coming into Samoa. Tell me what happened about that. Yes, as you know, during COVID, I do want to say that this is the longest batch case we have ever had on our books. As you know, during COVID, everything was shut down. And we had to pivot during COVID. And what I mean, since there were no visitors coming in, I work very closely with the airport sheriffs to prevent anyone from coming in who had COVID. Now, the father and the daughter, they were just getting ready to go back. There they are to Ilelio is his name. The dad and Rita, the daughter, they were just getting back to go to American Samoa when boom at the airport. Sorry, you are not getting on this flight to American Samoa because it is grounded. They had no money, no place to stay. And fortunately, over the many years that I've been working at Bash and dealing with different people, I was able to call up some of my counterparts and other nonprofits. And for one year, Bash assisted along with the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army helped them for a few months. Thank God for them. And a year later, they went home to American Samoa and they were so grateful for our services because we're able to give them food, shelter, emergency care. I personally gave Rita a laptop so she could continue her education and go on to get her high school diploma, which she did. Well, Jessica, I love hearing these insights. You know, there's just the details, what goes on behind the scenes. And I remember watching the news when there was the that plane on the North Shore, the skydiving plane that that crashed. I think there was maybe like 11 people on board that they all they all died. Did you assist them as well? Yes, we did. Bash was involved in that because several of the of the victims were visitors. And then the wonderful, the wonderful thing that we have here in Hawaii, Rusty, is to work in partnership with other agencies, such as the American Red Cross. At that time, Maria Letts was with the American Red Cross. We work together. We also work with the NTSB. As you know, when there's an airline crash, the National Transportation Safety Bureau, they sent their people over. I was able to get complimentary hotel rooms for the visitors, for the visitors who flew in, the family members, who got the horrible news, meals, transportation and more importantly, giving them the aloha, the just sometimes just being there, the support that they needed. You can't even imagine being a family member back home and your families there in a Hawaiian vacation, you hear that they passed away. It's horrifying, but we are just so glad that we were there to come with them. And it was wonderful working with the Red Cross as well on that particular incident. Jessica, I know that you're involved with Toastmasters. And in fact, you guys had invited me to be a keynote speaker a few years ago. What is your role with Toastmasters now? Yes, and by the way, love your speech when you were the keynote speaker, speaking about your books. And my role with Toastmasters now is I just completed being an area director. I have started a brand new Toastmasters club along with Gloria Shishito, who is another Toastmasters called TravelTalk. And that's where every first and third Wednesday we get on Zoom and we go to another country, whether it be an African safari or Italy. And we're going to Australia this month through the eyes of another Toastmaster. And so it's an uplifting club. And so that's my role right now to continue to attend Toastmasters meetings and to continue with TravelTalk. Well, that makes me feel good that you liked my speaking there. I mean, you guys are all professional speakers. And you know, when I gave my keynote speaking, there's one part where I talked about welcoming adversity and looking forward to challenges. And that's what I would do to train my players on my team is, you know, that adversity, it's inevitable. And some of us are going to experience deeper levels than others. But adversity is nonetheless. And so I wanted to train their mindset to really look forward to these adversities, look forward to these challenges. Because when we deal with it and we get through it, we become better for that experience. We become stronger and tougher. What are your thoughts? I totally agree with you. I love reading your book where you say that. I love reading where you deal with adversity. But I also know that every single human being deals with adversity differently because we're all made differently. And you're absolutely right. I don't think there's a human being on earth who has not gone through some type of adversity. My father passed away while he was on vacation. And when he was on vacation, he remarried. He was on his honeymoon. So it was actually after that experience that I decided, many years ago, that I decided I wanted to help visitors because I know personally what it feels like to lose someone on vacation. That adversity made me stronger. I agree with you. Absolutely. And I've also heard people say, Rusty, and I don't know if you have, that adversity did make me stronger. In adversity, when somebody says, Rusty, you're never going to have your own show. Think tech. Think tech. That boom, you work harder to get to that goal. That that actually makes people work harder. You're so right, Jessica. And Jessica, I want to ask you one more thing before we wrap up. What gives you fulfillment? What gives me fulfillment is being around caring people, being around loving people. I have an aunt. She lives in Aberdeen. She's a grandmother. And I had a cousin who passed away. And my aunt, when my cousin passed away from cancer, she took care of her four children. And she's my everyday hero. What gives me fulfillment is watching everyday heroes doing caring, loving things and being around inspirational people like you. That gives me fulfillment. Thank you, Rusty. Well, Jessica, you inspire me. And so I think what we need to do is try to inspire as many people, you know, in society as possible. And Jessica, I want to really thank you for taking time to be on the show today. Thank you for the invitation. I really appreciate it. Keep up the great work. And I love your books. Thank you, Jessica. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. For more information, please visit Rusty Komori.com. And my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Jessica and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence. And to find your greatness. And help others find theirs. Aloha.