 Well hello and how are you doing, Gordo the Texar here and welcome to another exciting and thrilling episode of Hibachi Talk. Got my good old buddy, Andrew the security guy in the house. Everybody how's it going? Nice to see you Andrew. Good to be back. Good to have you here. You're not here much but you're here. I'm here. Yeah, mentally. So so. I thought something was missing. Yeah, something was missing. And speaking of something missing. He found me out already. God just got here. Good job. Good job. We have a good old buddy Chuck Larson here. Hey, is that background picture the one that people see? Yes, what they're seeing. I see that island there. Yeah. That's my island. I know. I know you've been fined on that island many a time. That's why I picked it. Hey, thanks. Anyway. Like home sweet home. See, I knew I'd lose control of this guy. Anyway, Chuck Larson is the founder and chief executive officer of Segal Schools, which has been around for some time. And we're going to talk about early education and intergenerational care. Early and generational care. Intergenerational care. Oh, got you. So I love it. So and Chuck is a world recognized leader in this. Okay. Beautiful. Hey, I go to China and I stand out. Yes, right. You do. I know I've got to lose control of this thing already. Okay, but first we always ask our guests, so where did you go to school? Like, what did you study? And where did you go to school? Where'd you come from, Chuck? It was a virgin birth, actually. Okay. These always start interesting, right? Okay. Well, first of all, I came to Hawaii on a one year, when I thought it was a paid vacation to be a public school teacher. Okay. They hired me over the phone. They were so desperate in those days. And, you know, I had my vision of what Hawaii was going to look like. I thought, give me a bicycle, and that's all I'm going to eat right now. And this was on Kauai. Okay. So, part of that, I had gone to college to be a, well, a teacher. But I wanted to work with young children, which was unusual for a man. And in those days, I didn't even know there was anything younger than a kindergarten teacher. So I was being trained to be a kindergarten teacher. And the college had never had a man major in primary education, and I didn't know what to do with me. Oh, wow. Interesting. Where would you go to school? I was just passing me. Where'd you go? Pacific Lutheran in Tacoma. In Tacoma. Okay, in Washington. Okay. Then I came here and taught school for one year, like I said, on Kauai. And then I went back to graduate school at Western Washington. And I missed Hawaii so much that I finished graduate school in nine months. Oh. I was on a boat back to Hawaii the day I finished. Wow. Wow. You know. So what year was that? When did you come back to Hawaii? 1967 was my first time here. And then I came back in 1969. Okay. I graduated from high school in 1967. So you are older than me. You're making that up. No, I'm not. Well, you guys were talking about pirates earlier, so I didn't know how far back we were going to go. Wow. Well, thanks for making me feel so good. But you took a boat when you came back? I did. Okay. We were going to swing his airplanes back in those days. What? It was a pirate boat. You were a stowaway? All right. All right. So you come to Hawaii, but you come to Hawaii and then what's your plan? You're going to do what? A stowaway school? Or what are you going to do? No, I came here as a tourist, basically. Well, before that, I've had adolescent fantasies of Polynesia almost my whole life. Okay. Brown-skinned women, white beaches, palm trees, and I've had all that. Okay. So you come here in the 60s and you have to make a living. Really? Yeah, really. We had a couple of thousand now that I'm living, and they're doing just fine. So what made you create Segal School? Well, when I came back from graduate school, back to Hawaii, I had a job with the Department of Education, but they overhired and they didn't have a place for me. So being a little bit restless, I started looking at the paper and I saw an ad for a job at Cahill Park Terrace, if you can believe that, okay? And they hired me to be what they call a taught or programmed coordinator for a federally funded project. Okay. It's called PAT now. Cool. And, boy, I didn't know what I was doing. I never worked with kids younger than kindergarten before, but I had a child, so I thought I knew something. And they hired me because I was a male, and that I might have some influence on the locals living at KPT, and I'll tell you, they taught me way more than I taught them. It was a good experience. Interesting. Okay, go ahead. And then I kept going. I kind of jumped from one place to another, learning about early education. Okay. And even went to Kauai, and I was training Head Start teachers. Okay, wow. And then a friend of mine who was living in Kailua told me that she had a job that was going to come up because she was going to quit it. There was a small childcare center in Kailua right next to the YMCA, I think it's the YMCA, yeah, one in the Polly Highway. And so I came over and took the job. I remember in the interview, they offered me a salary, and I said, well, okay, I don't think you'd get anything better than me. And they said, you're right, we can't get anything better than you. So that salary is what they meant. Yeah, that salary, right. What did you pay for? And so I worked there for about five or six months, and then they went out of business. Oh, great. And I worked at unemployment. What a good deal unemployment is. Yeah. And I traveled around the islands, and while I was doing that, I was reading this book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Okay. You know, a funky little book, and I thought, kind of the airy-fairy kind of thing, happy days. Yep, yep. And so my landlady, I said, hey, after that school went out of business, she said, hey, why don't you start that school up again and I'll help you get some federal funding. And she said, pick a name. So Seagull School. Jonathan, it came from the book. That's so good. I put a lot of thought into it. That's all I'm going to point that out. I like the alliteration of the name, you know. I thought it was another job between unemployment checks. Yeah. Really. Well, I've had the same job now for 46 years. So what's that? 46 years Seagull School, which is now Seagull Schools, has been in existence. And you founded this with the small, and how large or small was the school when you first started it? 38 kids. 38 kids in Kailura, Waimanawa. Kailura, yeah. My office is still in that same spot. But the thing about Seagull Schools is that it's been a great vehicle for trying lots of new things. I'm sure we've failed as many things as we've succeeded at. Some of our early projects were, we were the first ones in the state to be licensed to do group infant child care. Group infant child care. What's that? It used to be, you know, in a center, center-based, center-based infant care. And we did that as a demonstration project. We had a generous grant from Harold Castle Foundation to provide free infant care for teens living in Waimanawa, because I lived in Waimanawa. So they could go back to high school and we would watch their children. And we got a big write-up in the newspapers, the front page, and nobody would come. All the people in Waimanawa thought, hey, if I go to that, that means I'm a bad parent. Oh, really? We also, the culture aspect. Yeah, yeah. I mean, everybody does it in their families, you know. But as soon as we had that big article in the Star Bulletin, all the people from Hawaii Kai started coming. Oh. They came from Waimanawa. Yeah, we charged them, though. Oh, yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, they wanted the free 99 stuff. Yeah, yeah. Wow. So that was an interesting project we did. Another one we had was, we started the state's first child care referral. Okay. What's that? Well, it's done by Patch now. Okay. Please go to Tenants Children. They started up after we stopped it. But we had a grant to do this. A lot of the stuff we get grants to, you know, whenever we're being improvising things. And so we had a grant to do that. And we ran the first child care referral agency for quite a while. Another one we did was, we had a traveling preschool in Waimanawa. Okay. We got a really beautiful van donated by some Chevy dealer. And we had a grant from Hellcastle Foundation. And we took this van around to different neighborhoods in Waimanawa. Different neighborhoods. What, during the day? Yeah, during the daytime. Different neighborhoods. And we set up this preschool in a park. Wow. And I remember thinking, this is a good idea. It's working. So at that time, I was involved with the Polynesian Voyaging Society. I sailed with the Hokalea for about nine years. And so I asked Piki Thompson. I said, hey, Piki, don't you think this is a good idea? Maybe you'd like to fund it? Yeah. So Piki sent some guys out, you know, and they looked at, next thing you know, Command Mass Schools was done it. They had traveling preschools. Wow. They copied you. Yeah. Oh, that's not fair. Did the group infant care get copied? Because I remember doing security for one of the child care facilities up at Schofield. And they had, their rooms were like that. All the infant care was in groups like that. And this was what it would have been in, like, 98. So did that, did that, did that, because you guys were first, did that stick around or did that become the way? Well, I know it is. Did that become the way to do it? Did that become the way to do it? Yeah. Okay, interesting. They're monitoring the license now. Wow. That's real stringent thing. Yeah, yeah. The guidelines. Number of people per infant, all that stuff, right? Yeah, it's not just babysitting. Yeah. Oh, no, no. You're a credited early education facility, facilities. I mean, you've got, what, almost 200 staff? Yes, yes. Wow. We've got just about 1,000 kids. And about 1,000, 1,000 kids that you have. All K to 12 or what? No, it's 18 months till we go to kindergarten. Oh, wow. But we've got people older than that even. When Gordon was on the board, I remember one time we were having a board meeting. When did you win? Am I no longer on the board? It's so, by the way, did something happen that would have happened today? No, now you tell me. I'm just a messenger. Don't hurt me. Okay. No. I mean, we were sitting around a table, our board, having a regular board meeting. And remember, we just built the first phase of our Kapolei school. That was intimately involved with that. And we were thinking about, you know, about doing an infant care center. And we were thinking, I don't care. That's not a good business. You know, it's just so expensive. So one of our board members, Karen Kito Moskatell, Karen says, well, what about adult care? And boy, the light went on with everybody. And so we committed to space and our architectural design to doing that. And then I went to the mainland and looked at 22 what they call shared site facilities. But none of them were actually architecturally designed for adults and young children together. And so what we were doing was, it was pretty groundbreaking. I had one experience at a geriatric hospital in West Seattle. And the guy who was putting the intergenerational program together for that was doing it for the benefit of the older adults. Right. It was 800 bed hospital. Oh. And he was designing an infant care program on the ground floor where all of the older adults would be passing by. And one of the things he taught me was that just visual contact is a valuable experience. So they don't have to be touching each other and, you know, in close proximity. And so if you come out and see our facility at Coppola, you'll see how we designed it so that there's visual pathways between the older adults, the kupuna, and the young children, the keiki. And this project has worked so well that people have copied us, you know. How long has that been around now? You think about it. About 24 years. 24, 25 years. What a great idea, though. Yeah. And it makes total sense. It does make sense. Sure. You don't have to talk people into it. Yeah. Everybody says, oh, yeah. Because everybody loves babies. Well, and everybody wants a kupuna, right? Everybody wants another grandpa, right? Another grandma. Hey, you know when I go to the rotary club or something, I've got some really good stories. Oh, I bet. Can I just tell you a quick one? Yeah, okay. We'll have a break. Go for it. Okay. Well, I'm going out to our Kapolei school and daily all the kupuna get pushed out if they want to in their walkers or wheelchairs. And they walk around this walkway but connects all the classrooms together. And the children are on the playground in the middle of all this activity. And they talk to the kupuna and it's this dialogue going on a daily basis. And so this one guy's getting pushed out in his wheelchair by an aide. His name is Joe Filler, okay? And he's got a little stuffed animal in his lap. I said, Joe, what are you going to do with that stuffed animal? He says, oh, I'm going to give it to my girlfriend, Kayla. And so the aide says, yeah, yeah, he and Kayla have this relationship. I said, okay, that's great. Same day, okay? I'm working as my usual job, the maintenance man. You'll fix an irrigation system. And I got this nice looking volunteer. He's a young Japanese guy from the east coast. He works for the Navy and a atomic submarine. He's signed out here. And I said, what are you doing out here? You know, volunteering. He says, oh, my daughter Kayla goes to school here. Can you believe a coincidence like that? That's awesome. Welcome to Hawaii, right? That one degree of separation. So I said, well, do you know about the relationship between your daughter and Joe Filler? He says, I certainly do. You know, we're from the east coast. We have no family here. And Joe gave her that stuffed animal about three months ago, and she sleeps with it every single night. Wow. Whoa. Chicken skin. Yeah, chicken skin. Okay, so I'm always looking for free publicity. I think this is a great story. Yeah. And so I call my friend, he writes for the Star advertiser, he's the one. I'll forget, I'll think of his name in a minute, but he used to like to ride by airplanes. Well, Joe Filler was a retired airline pilot. Okay, can we get a pause? Okay. Okay, we'll continue. We'll call a poignant pause. Okay. All right. So we're going to take a break and pay some bills. I have a picture of Chuck, the basketball player, that we might show at some point in time. We'll show it when we first, when we come back and Andrew will do his security minute, we'll go find Angus. Anyway, we're going to take a break. We're right here with Chuck Larson, the founder of Segal Schools, and we'll be back in a minute. Aloha. My name is Carl Campania, and I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Education Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I invite you to come watch our show on ThinkTechHawaii.com. You can also see our shows on YouTube as well. You can Google search those. I appreciate the time. I hope that you do join us as we learn about education, about the educational system here in Hawaii, what the challenges are, what the benefits are, and how much our kids are learning. So thank you. I hope you join us. Aloha, Kako. I'm Marcia Joyner, and I'm inviting you to navigate the journey. We are discussing the end-of-life options, and we would really love to have you every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m. right here. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to ThinkTech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Hey, Andrew, security guy here, and I got a quick update for you on a problem we identified last year. You might recall that a lot of serious vulnerabilities were found in a lot of D-Link products, including routers, cameras, access points, especially with this D-1510 line. Researchers found that this is actually an enterprise-recommended switch, and they found that it had insecure authentication design, and it got reported in D-Link last January. The FTC, if you saw, filed a lawsuit against them because they had really made some deceptive claims about the security of the product. Anyway, what researchers demonstrated was that an unauthenticated attacker could get information out of the device, including the username and password, and then basically take over administrative control of the device. And, of course, once they own that, they own your network. On February 21st, a couple of days ago, D-Link finally released a firmware update for that device. So if you've got any of these D-Link devices, make sure you take a look at D-Link's website and check this stuff. Currently, the firmware release that they put out is just a beta firmware release, but it looks like it's sound. As soon as it's been tested a little more, they'll release a final version of it. But if you're running this equipment, definitely go out and get this update. If you haven't removed this equipment, if you did remove it, you can probably update the firmware and put it back in service. So there you go. Take care of your gear. Take care of your firmware. We found Angus out on the beach as always. He's never here when we start, but he always manages his way in. Angus, what's going on, buddy? What are you doing there, dude? All right, man. Hey, Chuckie! Talk like a pilot! You're scaring me! Chuckie! There you go. He talks like a pilot. He's talking like a pilot today. Sounds like it. He does it. All the way to school and everything. It was me, Bedin's. You know what we call children in Scotland, Bedin's. The Scottish word of the day. Anyway, you know, I've been giving up gadgets for a while and looking at other things, and I call it, are you kidding me? So I took a couple of pictures the other day there. Check this out. Come on, people, you can't have put your shopping carts away. Look at how much work it took to plow those shopping carts up on the lawn. I know you're really working hard and you're really tired and everything, but it's only like 100 feet to put the shopping cart away. How rude is that? It's really rude. How rude is that? It is really, really rude. So come on, get your sweet little tiny, open mouthful, tiny old coldies up off the chair and move the cart back to where you got it. Anyway, that's my, are you kidding me for the week? And as we say at the end of every Angus segment, let your wing gang free. Where will you be? Hello? Angus trying to keep you honest out there. You know you can put that cart away and you just don't. So do it. Help everybody else out, man. Be a good neighbor. All right, Chuck. Welcome back, brother. So we're talking about your buddy. Put in the cart away, though. Yeah. Yeah. Here are the principles of Loa. Yes. What was it? Robbie Ohm, pretty much composer. That's one of the principles of Loa. Yeah. Put the cart away. Put your cart away. Jesus. How hard is it? The hard heart is it. And I watch these people struggling to get it up on that. Oh, they fight to put it on the curb? It was harder to get it on the curb than it was to take it not even 50 feet. Hey, I know this pisses you off, too, there. When somebody leaves it in the frickin' parking spot. Oh, yeah. Yeah, what's up with that? I mean, you like to ram it, but it's your car. I know. Oh, just irritating. Okay, we're dyke. We dyke. Once again, we digress. No, that was part of our segment. He picked that right up. What was it? Live Aloha. Live Aloha. Part of the policy, man. Put your frickin' cart away. Yeah. Oh, man. Angus pushed a button there, didn't he? Well, I mean, everybody hates that, but people do it. It's a slander of issue. I'm glad we brought it up. Man. All right. Let's get out of here and go get something. Let's get back to Flipper. What was his name? Joel Filler. Filler. Yeah, yeah. So, Joel Filler, I'm thinking about, you know, it gets a free publicity out of this story. It puts the story in the newspaper. Right. And still trying to think of his name. Not Jim Dooley, because he's an investigative reporter. He'll come to me. So, the response is, about three weeks later, I get a call from these people in the mainland. They want to know, what is Seagull's school? Do you guys teach sailing or hang going? I don't know. But what happens, he's been, he was Googling his, the name, Joel Filler, because that was his dad's name. He'd been looking for his dad for 30 years. Oh, come on. Really? That's what he said. Oh, come on. He'd split up, and when he'd go to it, it popped up, because it was on the newspaper. And this was his son, Joel Filler's son. This is amazing. So, I was looking for more free publicity. I read. You wrote that story, too? I read your reunion. Sure. I read it on TV. Sure. Okay, so, but then this, it turns out, you know, that, you know, they also had a daughter, and she came with the son. And the dyer moved here to stay near her father. Yeah. And it was just, you know, a tear drop reunion. Wow, wow, wow. It started with, spotting that toy in his lap. Yeah. Yeah, in that lap. So if I can, so if I can play off this a little bit, you know, there's, there's that, that degrees of separation. Have you had any famous students, like any students that have come through the program that you could, you could name? Okay, well, we had this kid who was three years old. He was at our downtown school. Yeah. And I, you know, we always, I go out there and play, throw ball around, stuff like that with him. And so, there's one little guy who was throwing this nerve-foot ball and he was cashing it pretty good and throwing it back. And we did it for a while. You know, 18 years later, I see his picture on the paper. It's Marcus Mario. Oh, wow. He came through SEAL. Yeah, he came through SEAL. Who knows, that could have been his throwing arm there. You never know. Okay, you guys know who Aki Bono is? Yeah. Well, at our Wyoming Hall School, he was king of the Sandbox. I bet. Actually, he's a very gentle kid. He's pretty better, better hefty. He was, he was a large, a large kid. Yeah. Wow. He knows the Sandbox. That's pretty cool. Hey, do you know who Dan Foley is? I do. Yesterday, I met the Y working out. This guy says, are you Chuck Larson? I'm Dan Foley. I haven't seen Dan for a long time, but he had two kids in our school a long time. Right. For me, that's one of the most fun things. Just running into people you never know. Well, at your age, you're running into adults. Well, after 40 years, yeah, like you've had a couple of generations come through, maybe. I had two grandchildren that went through the program. Oh, okay. And so, they're in their 20s now. Wow. I mean, that's a good time. And then I'm going to ask you when we see this Chuck Larson. Nice. How is that? The basketball player, how is this? In doing early education, intergenerational care, I'm going to ask you this question. How old are you? Well, for people asking, how old am I? I say I'm 95. Okay. Okay, because I look so good for 95. Yeah. Sex. Somebody asked me that just two days ago. I'm riding my bike and why I'm an all-in-one. Somebody says, Chuck, how old are you? I'm 95. Yeah, that's awesome. So what's the 74? 74, well. What's the big, I mean, these are some major accomplishments and major trends that you start in education, you know, for this group. So what's the highlight for you? I mean, gosh, you seem to have a lot, but can you pick one and talk about it? Oh, first time I saw my wife, she was blank for a job. Ah, pull the gym out of that, out of that. There you go. Right on. Yeah, she's watching, of course. Yeah, she'll watch and she'll know for sure. Good answer on that. And all your relatives are verse two tellers. Yeah, I think your wife and my wife used to go to the same church together at some point in time, I think. Oh, out in White Power or something? Or somewhere while he was, or White Power. But they both got the same name. They both got Cindy. That's right. Cynthia. I got Cindy. Yeah, I'm going to rise in with what's happening at Seagull Schools. Sure. Blue Zone is a concept that was started by this guy who worked for National Geographic Magazine. He traveled all around the world. And he noticed that there were places in the world where people lived to be of a longer age and they were healthy. You know, we've all North Okinawa is an example of that. Some islands in the Mediterranean, Loma Linda, California. Don't you ask me about Loma Linda, California? The Monkey Heart happened. You know what? No, the vegetarians. No, the vegetarians. The first Monkey Heart transplant was in Loma Linda. Oh. Monkey to monkey or we're talking about it? No, monkey to human. What are you talking about? No, I didn't talk about it. Go ahead. You were the guy. You were the recipient. That's right. No, that's why you can't find any monkeys in Loma Linda. They all left. Oh, Lord. Oh, God. Oh. Oh, God. How did he get down his blue zone with that, man? Alright. Alright. Blue zone project. Blue zone project. Well, blue zone project, correctly. So they started this project in small towns in Iowa and Minnesota. They work with these small towns to have them buy into living with healthier criteria. Right. Like, oh, I mentioned being a vegetarian, getting exercise, having a lot of social interaction. Well, anyway, what they want to do is they want to... Well, they... I think the strategy behind this is that if they don't do something to make people have healthier lives, it's going to bank up the system when all the baby boomers are at that age. Okay. So looking at ways to keep people healthy and getting people to buy into it, which is a good idea. So my organization, Segal Schools, we went through this process and locally it's coordinated by HMSA. Oh. Put a lot of money into it. And a lot of the public relations. So after we were approved to be a blue-zone project, they... But giving us a lot of publicity, I think, goes on some morning TV program, mid-week. And they bought a spot in Hawaii Business Magazine. Okay. So, I believe it or not, we've burned a half an hour and I've got... Kidding me? I'm not kidding you. I kid you not. Jesus, can we make it an hour? No. You can come on next week. You can come on again. We can have a part two. We'll have that again. This is Chuck Larson, the founder of Segal Schools over... How many schools now? Seven? Five. Five schools, 1,000 students, 200-plus employees, fully accredited, and one of the most affordable in the state of Hawaii I will add. And we fully... It's the best deal. And we fully left them hanging about the blue-zone story. So you've got to come back. You've got to come back. Anyway, no guest goes unrewarded. There you go. You get your autographed solo cup number 103 in the series. Cheers to that forever. OK. And as we say at the end of every show, one, two, three, how you doing?