While all of us can say we are students at Kalāheo, it is only a few of us that later choose to be employed by Kalāheo high school. Even so, an even smaller amount can say we attended Kalāheo Intermediate School. But there is a Kalāheo grad who was able to go above and beyond in achieving this. Jay Atkins, class of 1976, didnʻt just attend or work at the school. He gave back to the kids through hard, often free, work. From security to assistant athletic director to equipment manager, Atkins shared how he was able to give thousands of hours to the school over the span of a twenty-year career.
Now in retirement on the Big Island, Atkinsʻ shared his work experience at the school. “I worked in security for 15 years. I was also the assistant athletic director as well as sports equipment manager for Mr. Fuddy and Mr. Brilhante for 10 years. I collected money at the door of the gym for 15 years. Whatever events were at the gym I was the guy collecting money.”
Being a security guard, Atkins found ways to connect to students with his own experiences attending the school. “Growing up, I was kind of a punky kid. I did a lot of bad things and so I would target the bad kids at the school and relate to how they were feeling ”.
Despite having worked at Kalāheo for as long as he did, he managed to rarely take any students to the office while working as a security guard. “I was lucky if I took five kids to the office. I would call them out of the class, I would go one-on-one with them and the next day everything with them changed.”
Atkins gave credit to Security guard Blossom Aweau for showing him how to talk to and grow closer to students. “She is the one who turned my life around when it came to the kids. When I first got there, I was still rough around the edges but Blossom was the one who told me to mellow out because the kids are not going to listen to you. And it worked. And that's exactly what happened,” he explained.
Security didnʻt stop there for Atkins. Owning a machine rental business, he was able to use his equipment to give back to the school. From the planters in front of the gym, C building garden to the football field and sports awards in the gym, you name it, Atkins did it. “I used a scissor lift among other machines to do many, many, many projects at the school. For instance, an excavator I used to dig holes to plant trees. All of those planter boxes in front of the gym, that's all mine. I gave them to the school. And alongside the gym, on your way down to PE, on the right, there are big square cement planters. There were tall Italian cypress trees in there, about 30 feet tall. Every one of those boxes had a big tree and all of them I planted.”
“I scratched the ground and made it so you could start planting whatever you planted there. Those cement stones that lead from B building to the office, right up that little hill in front of B building, between B and C, there are big, round cement stones to step on. I did all the digging with the machine.”
As former equipment manager, Atkins also gave credit to long-time teacher and former coach, Chris Mellor in his effort of improvement in Kalāheo Football. When Coach Chris Mellor came in, everything changed. He was the best football coach we had. Being an equipment manager, I dealt with helmets, shoulder pads, all the pads—sliding them out. In the middle of the season, when Coach Chris coached, we had maybe four or five helmets left over in my room. Because kids are coming out to play, the helmets are getting used. But the reason why they're coming out to play is because we're successful. Nobody wants to play for a loser. So my first couple years with Coach Chris, the helmets went from 20 being left over to 10 to 5”.
“Together, we invented a football field. A field of dreams where we got a whole grassroots committee together, and planned the field that we're going to make ourselves. There's a small set of bleachers that we orchestrated getting and the class of ‘76 paid for.”
From every jersey, achievement and banner came Atkins on a scissor lift to hang and place each item on the gym walls. “I would use a rectangular platform, called a scissor lift that can shoot up 19, 20 feet straight in the air, to hang the jerseys and banners around the gym. Those jerseys, I got the funds from the school. Mr. Fuddy (athletic director and former coach), bought the frames for me to hang. Even with the track records, I would take my scissor lift, go up there, take off the old name, and put on the new name,” he explained.
Spending countless hours at Kalāheo, sometimes seeing the campus more than his own home or wife. However, Atkins explained that it was because of the students that made everything worth it in the end.
“I would work security for three hours. Then I would be the equipment manager for two hours. After that, I would go to the gym and work at the gym for four hours. At times, my wife wouldn't see me, but I lived right down the street, so it was so simple to do all of this. I loved giving back to the school, it wasn’t something I talked about, it just happened. “
“You can always change. I'm a perfect example of that. I used to pass it on to the kids. The work I did was for the students, that’s all that mattered to me. And if I could help one out of every five, I did a good job. Hopefully, that’s exactly what I did.”