Waylin Kaneakua found her way to the PAF ʻOhana through her children, and serendipity. She was dropping off her daughter for a day in the NALU studies summer program in July 2020, when she saw Derek drop his papers. She bent down to help, and he assumed she was a new hire. He asked her to help welcome and check the temperatures of incoming students, and she did. Then, she saw some girls goofing off and took it upon herself to scold em. The PAF ʻOhana knew that Waylin was exactly what we needed. “And that was it! Next thing you know I was with PAF, and it’s been good ever since!” Waylin continued to volunteer sporadically with PAF for a few months, until one July day Jayten was telling Uncle Herb that he needed help at the pond. Uncle Herb turned to Waylin and said, “Waylin, do you mind?” Waylin, not realizing how much she would be able to learn or do, or even realizing that she would be paid, agreed. “I just wanted to be here,” she says.

Waylin Kaneakua is a beloved member of the PAF ʻOhana! Photo credit: Grace Cajski

Now, as an ʻāina educator within the PAF ʻOhana, Waylin welcomes school groups on huakaʻi, visitors to the pond, and guests at our Moonlight concert; she mentors interns, cares for the pond, and helps kilo it. “This place here, it just connects you,” she says. Waylin does not just love Waikalua Loko for the lessons it has taught her daughters through NALU Studies, or for its role in this new phase of her life. She is a lineal descendant of this place, and once was a little girl playing on its shores. “I would get scoldings because I was always in the pond, catching crabs. Or I would clean up the area, clean up the beach. It was a place that I was just connected to, it felt like home.”

Returning here, decades later with her kids—knowing, she says, “that I can always bring my family to a place that inspires me and I can watch them grow”—Waylin sees all the ways that it has changed. Where once she would play with pebbles, there is now a true and strong kuapā; where once there was polluted water, now she is comfortable with her children getting muddy on workdays. It is surreal, that she is back here, working here. “This is a reconnecting place. I connected back to my cultural roots. Coming back here and being a part of PAF, and watching Uncle Herb with the groups. Just by him, reminding me that this is aloha. You gotta lead with aloha.”

Waylin is a lineal descendant of this place, and has many cherished memories of being a young girl on these shores. Photo credit: Grace Cajski

At first, Waylin didn’t understand what Uncle Herb meant by lead with aloha—”I’m nice to people!” she remembers thinking. But within a year of working with PAF, she had her epiphany: it’s more than just being nice. “Itʻs being rooted and knowing where you come from. And that aloha spirit…” Waylin realized that leading with aloha includes seeking to understand the kids who visit the pond, and being a willing mentor, guiding them. “This is what it means to lead with aloha—because a lot of the children we work with, they need that guidance,” says Waylin. Leading with aloha, she now knows, “is with everything you do: how you speak to people, how you approach people, how you fulfill your kuleana.” She carries other lessons from Uncle Herb, who she recognizes as one of her greatest mentors. His explicit guidance to “start at the end to get to the beginning” complements his implicit guidance: Waylin learned from his way of being reliable so that now, when people as her for something, “I do it and get it done;” and, when faced with a tough decision, she turns inwards and asks herself, what would Uncle Herb do if this were him? “Before PAF,” Waylin says, “I was rough. Now I take a step back. I don’t have time: I like what I do.” These lessons also apply to her children. “With them, I say ʻYou cannot be acting mental all the time: do you realize that it’s not just my responsibility, but your responsibility too? You have been through a PAF program, so you are held to a certain standard also.”

Waylin and Jayten support students at the 2025 Imi Wai Ola Conference. Photo credit: Grace Cajski

In many ways, Waylin’s return to the pond felt like fate. She felt stuck in a job that she knew was not her purpose in life. She had lost her son and father, and in the grief of the departure of loved ones, Waylin turned to the mana in the land. “There’s a lot of it here: it’s very serene, a place where you can actually sit and reflect. After work, I go to the third mākāhā and I lie down and stare at the sky.” To this day, Waylin notices that the pond calls people who have a heavy heart, and knows that part of the power of this place is its capacity to bring peace. These visitors come from many different origins and carry many different perspectives. There are tourists, who Waylin hopes can “learn to understand and respect our culture, our way of life, our land.” There are other visitors, too, and for them Waylin hopes that “when they come to this place, they learn humility, and then they find peace.” Regardless of their background, one thing is certain: there are always people at Waikalua Loko. “You’re always around people, and you always gotta carry yourself responsibly. Some days you may be mad at the world, or someone just pissed you off, but you gotta remember that you still have a responsibility and that responsibility is still to lead with aloha, no matter what you do.”

A beautiful lau hala heart! Photo credit: Grace Cajski

Waylin shares that returning to ʻāina, rebuilding connection alongside her family and the PAF ʻOhana does not feel like work. “To be back here, working here and taking care of it, thatʻs what I was meant to do: take care of the family.”