HONOLULU — College was the last thing on Keith Nove Baniqued’s mind after her family’s home burned down in a deadly forest fire that decimated her Hawaiian town. The 17-year-old, who was 7 when she moved to Maui from the Philippines, was about to start her senior year of high school but shifted her focus to her family’s struggles to find a place to live amid the tragedy.
Almost a year after the fire that destroyed thousands of other homes and killed 102 people in historic lahainaBaniqued is headed to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. And her family won’t have to worry about how to pay for it, thanks to $325,000 in scholarships awarded Wednesday to 13 Lahainaluna High School graduates attending schools in the continental United States.
“Even when I was in my final year, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue studying. I didn’t want to leave my family in the situation we were in,” she says of her feelings after the fire.
Her school survived the fire, but was closed for two months. reopening restored a small sense of normalcy and revived her dream of attending college off the coast of Hawaii. She also realized that a college degree would put her in a better position to help her family with their long-term recovery.
She applied to colleges with nursing programs, channeled her feelings about surviving the fire into scholarship essays, and decided she would attend UNLV, in part because its popularity among Hawaii students would make it feel a little like home.
With the help of a grant from the Hawaii Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund, the Downtown Athletic Club of Hawaii is providing Baniqued and her 12 classmates with approximately $25,000 each, intended to cover the cost of out-of-state tuition, after other scholarships and financial aid for the first year.
“A life-changing opportunity like this can be beneficial to any Hawaii high school student, and even more so to Lahainaluna graduates and all that they have been through,” said Keith Amemiya, president of the athletic club, which has led a fundraising campaign to support Lahainaluna student-athletes and coaches whose homes were destroyed in the fire.
In a separate effort after the fire, the University of Hawaii announced scholarships for 2024 Lahainaluna graduates to attend any campus in the state system. Nearly 80% of a graduating class of 215 applied to UH campuses, according to school records. As of last week, 105 students had enrolled at a UH school, leading to a record number of Lahainaluna graduates heading to college, school officials said, expecting that number to increase by mid-August.
Ginny Yasutake, a counselor from Lahainaluna, contacted Amemiya to ask if a similar arrangement to the UH scholarship could be made for student-athletes who chose to leave Hawaii for college.
With help from the Hawaii Community Foundation, they found funding to help even students who weren’t athletes. Both organizations are determined to find a way to provide the scholarships beyond the first year of college out of state and also to underclassmen affected by the fire, Amemiya said.
“These grants actually came as a last-minute dream,” said director Richard Carosso.
And Hawaii’s scholarships provided an opportunity for many who never thought college was possible, he said.
Carosso said the fact that they are going to college underscores the resilience of a graduating class whose first year of high school was disrupted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Emily Hegrenes, who attended the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in her scholarship essay that she had to find a way to train as a swimmer because the Lahaina Aquatic Center was closed in a restricted fire area.
“But for my senior season in high school, I worked harder than ever to recruit enough swimmers to hold team practices in a pool 45 minutes from my hometown,” she wrote. “With my Lahaina cap on, I proudly dove straight into my fears.”
Talan Toshikiyo, who plans to attend Oxnard College in California, says he wants to become an engineer and achieve financial stability, as it was already difficult for Native Hawaiians like him and other locals to live in Hawaii before the fire.
“I hope Lahaina is unchanged when I return from the mainland,” he wrote in his essay. “I dream that one day all the rents in Maui will be lower so the locals can afford it and not have to move far away.”