HIKI NŌ 1219 Aloha, and welcome to the first of two specials highlighting outstanding alumni from the first 10 years of HIKI NŌ.

I’m Noelle Lo, a proud HIKI NŌ student from Maui High School’s Class of 2022.

I look forward to becoming a HIKI NŌ alumna when I graduate, because I’ll be joining the ranks of “can do” students ready to take on the world with the skills and life lessons learned from their HIKI NŌ experience.

The five success stories you’re about to see inspire me to pursue my dreams and reach for the stars.

Our first alumna began her HIKI NŌ journey way back in the seventh grade and continued on through college and a budding career as a small business owner.

Meet Crystal Cebedo, from Waiʻanae High School’s Class of 2016.

When HIKI NŌ launched in February of 2011, I was a seventh grader at Wai‘anae Intermediate School under, uh, under media teacher Luane Higuchi.

When I think back to Crystal Cebedo as a seventh grader, I just remember her being very quiet and unsure of herself, but very eager to learn.

So you know, she picked up really quickly.

We were telling the story about, um, a teacher at Wai‘anae High School who was struggling with a really rare condition called trichotillomania, um, which is a disease that causes you to pull out your hair as an adverse reaction to stress.

I was about eight years old and actually started pulling out my eyelashes first, because I thought, you know, there’s like that legend that if you pull out your eyelash...or, if an eyelash falls out, you can make a wish on it.

And if you make a wish, hopefully it comes true.

But when eyelashes led to eyebrows, something was clearly wrong.

Trichotillomania is an impulse control disorder that causes me to pull out my hair as an adverse reaction to stress.

For my second HIKI NŌ story, which I did in the eighth grade, this was actually a story about me and my struggle to remain in control while things were happening outside of my control, such as my mother’s cancer.

And this story was really personal to me, obviously, because I was in it, and also because these were things I had never really talked about with anybody before.

Thirteen-year-old Crystal Cebedo has a list for everything.

And I still have to [INDISTINCT].

For a media producer and color-guard captain with a 4.0 GPA, everything must be neat, organized and in control.

Hey, I’m freaking Crystal Cebedo, nothing’s going to go wrong for me.

While many teenagers worry about who their next date will be, Crystal worries about who will remember to buy food for her family.

However, there are some things that lists can’t control.

My greatest concern is, you know, when I’m, I don’t know how many more years I have, you know, I have a stage four cancer.

She’s never going to see me in a graduation cap.

She’s never going to see me walk across the stage.

I don’t even care about how high school is anymore.

With control, I think what helped Crystal was being able to remove herself personally from the story, even though the story was about herself, you know.

I think she just focused on the job that had to be done, which is kind of phenomenal, considering what she was going through personally at home.

It was a really weird mix of feelings of just kind of sadness, you know, telling a story about such a strange time in my life and having to be super vulnerable as like a 13-year-old in front of the camera.

But, also just feeling incredibly, incredibly proud because I was, because I really felt like I had a grasp on storytelling and I knew exactly how I wanted to shoot the story once I had kind of, um, gotten into the groove of it.

And then, um, shortly after its broadcasting, my mother having passed away, I think it meant that, you know, the timing of it all, meant that, after my story was told, something that I would’ve normally kept to myself, actually turned into something kind of amazing because other...my classmates who had seen the story, because it was also broadcasted at my school, and other people who had reached out to me via letters who had seen the story on HIKI NŌ, I was just met with so much, uh, so much compassion on behalf of my classmates and everyone else who had seen the story.

Even though I’d dealt with it pretty awkwardly as a teenager, I’m very grateful for it now.

When I graduated high school, I went to Menlo College which is in Atherton, California, um, and then I majored in marketing and human resources.

I just graduated this past May in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and now I actually started a photography business, which is something I never thought that I would do.

I think the biggest reason why I decided to start a photography business was kind of the freedom that it gave me and it reminds me a lot of, um, of a lot of the creative freedom that I had back in high school, actually, to just have the space to create and tell something with your own voice.

I would like to think if I met my 13-year-old self, right now, in 2020, my 13-year-old self would think I’m pretty cool.

Um, I think she’d be really proud of who I am right now.

So, the school I went to was Kua O Ka Lā Miloliʻi Hipuʻu Virtual Academy and it’s a virtual program that’s based in Puna and it has bases outside of the Puna school and one of those bases was in Miloliʻi.

Miloliʻi is a fishing village on the south, uh, south end coast of the Big Island.

When everyone came down from HIKI NŌ and we started learning everything from them and they started mentoring us in how to, you know, make certain shots, how to scope out an area for a shot, it was all very, very foreign to me because it was my first time in an actual production.

I’ve always wanted to make content and that was one of the biggest motivators for me is, there was an opportunity to be creative and tell a story and write stories that other people can see.

And I thought, wow, I really, really, really like this and I, I want to continue to do this with HIKI NŌ.

Um, my HIKI NŌ story on Mauna Kea, the spark for it started when I went to the groundbreaking ceremony for the TMT and I saw the protests that had initially happened.

The dignitaries were funding the telescope and the people who were protesting the telescope were walking together away from the groundbreaking ceremony.

They’re walking together and they were talking, and I overheard some of the conversations that they had and I thought to myself, I was like, wait a minute, this is a lot more complex than I think it is, and I want to know more about it as well.

It was a huge issue, a lot of passion, a lot of different sides, and for Hoku to take it on, it was a little daunting for me, actually.

I love science and technology and I'm actively involved in web design and computer technology.

I’m also Hawaiian.

I respect my culture and its values.

The reason why I took it from a Native Hawaiian student, but also a student of science approach, a lover of science, was because I wanted to go into it as someone who just wanted to know more, to investigate, to look at everything.

So, what I loved about working with Hoku and actually found really inspiring myself, was how motivated and how passionate he was.

It’s a lot to ask of anyone to go out and spend hours and hours and hours, speaking to six, seven, eight, nine different people about a very emotional subject, and Hoku took it upon himself to really reach out to those people and to call, you know, the mayor he’s never met before.

I believe celestial navigation, astronomy, is a sacred science.

And the whole, the whole word that we were thinking of, when we were working together with Christi, was just being as objective as possible and keeping the balanced story.

And that stayed true into the editing, all up until the end when we eventually recorded it, is that, I didn’t, I didn’t, I couldn’t take a side, and that, you know, this whole story is something that, I just, it’s too complex and taking a side wouldn’t do it justice because it’s something that happens from all perspectives.

I’m still torn.

I want to preserve the places that mean so much to my cultural heritage, but I also see that the project will bring new understanding of our universe and provide educational opportunities to students in Hawaiʻi.

I hope to revisit this in 10 years’ time and see for myself if TMT does, in fact, keep their commitments, both to help expand our knowledge of the universe and to be respectful stewards of our cultural sites.

Five years after the story had taken place, I’m still neutral about it and that’s because I continue to see different sides for the story popping up left and right.

I really, really, really appreciate the story so much more having watched it a year later and even several years, and it’s a piece I think that, holds up over time and actually gets better over time, for me, for sure.

I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since we did HIKI NŌ.

It’s crazy that it’s almost been 10 years that we even graduated high school, can you believe that?

I know.

I really can’t.

You know, it was such a great experience to do HIKI NŌ and who knew that 10 years later we’d be here talking about it?

I know.

So, I do remember when we were working on our project for HIKI NŌ and when Mrs. Roy approached us and said she wanted us to do this project, Maui County was just about to implement a ban on plastic bags.

Um, and that was really the beginning of the two of us standing up for what we wanted to do and believing in our story on plastic bag alternatives because Maui was the first in the state to pass that kind of ban, so it was really important for other people to know about it.

After the January ban of plastic bags, Maui County sought to find other alternatives to fill the void.

It was much worse.

Um, with the trade winds, all of these fences, all along the outside, the trees, all the litter screens, everything was usually full, every day, even though we’d clean it up pretty much every morning.

I think the fact that we’re friends made it, made us perfect teammates because you know, there wasn’t really...it never really felt like one of us was like more than the other and I really just feel like we tag-teamed everything.

We played to each other’s strengths, you know, you were way better at video.

I don’t know what I was supposed to be good at, but I feel like we were equal.

Yeah, and I think, you know, it really never occurred to us to go off by ourselves because we’re a team and we still are.

As other islands mull over the banning of plastic bags, you can consider some of the alternatives used by Mauians.

This is Monica Medrano from H.P.

Baldwin High School for HIKI NŌ.

You know, the HIKI NŌ experience was so valuable to both of us because personally, I went into public relations and worked in the U.S. Senate and I really used the same skill set that I had used in HIKI NŌ.

I never was able to take another broadcast journalism class, just because of my work schedule in college, so, HIKI NŌ and doing video club with Mrs. Roy are really the only formal video training that I’ve had.

And that translated into me getting an internship in the Senate because I knew how to take photos and frame photos, um, frame shots, to working for Senator Hirono as the youngest press secretary in the United States Senate and her deputy communications director.

And throughout that time, I did all of her video, all of her editing, and I learned that it was a really valuable skill to have kind of, um, that combined video digital experience with public relations experience.

After I left HIKI NŌ, you know, once I went to UNLV, I studied broadcast journalism for four years and in each of my classes, I had never realized how much of a leg up I had over everybody else.

And that really, really helped me when I was, you know, getting my first job, getting my internships and every little step that I learned in HIKI NŌ really helped me develop my voice as a news writer.

And I started producing at our Fox station in Las Vegas, um, and I worked my way up from associate producer to producing the 10 p.m. newscast and eventually now being executive producer of the morning show.

Um, so everything I really genuinely feel like, everything that I learned video wise, I can attribute to the skills we picked up during HIKI NŌ.

Uh, 10 years ago, I don’t think I would’ve believed that I would be, you know, managing a morning show and you know, uh, having an entire production team and an entire news team that I’d be directing and calling the shots for.

I don’t have words for how speechless I would’ve been 10 years ago to know the kinds of things that I’m doing today.

You know, I think if 18-year-old me working on HIKI NŌ saw where I was now, I wouldn’t believe it.

I didn’t, you know, it was a dream of mine to be C.J.

Cregg from The West Wing, um, but when I went to college, even when I went to college, I didn’t realize that you could do political communications as a career.

And to be able to do it in the U.S. Senate and to be there for two Supreme Court nominations, it was just this incredible experience.

And now to be home in Hawaiʻi, but really to have the same ethos the whole time, which is what I was taught in HIKI NŌ and in Mrs. Roy’s broadcast journalism class, is that everyone has a story and we’re here to tell those stories.

Uh, when I first heard about HIKI NŌ, uh, 10 years ago, uh, I had to recollect that, but it was, uh, very much a, a program that kind of gave me a voice and I was very much shocked, like, wow, they're going to trust us with creating videos and airing it on TV for people to see.

And that was, that was a very large honor to me and a, and a huge privilege for us to even have that, uh, avenue, uh, of being able to voice our opinion.

My name is, uh, Papu Uti.

I'm a junior attending Kapolei High School.

On the day of March 19, 2009, my freshman year, uh, I got into, what you call, a freak accident.

During a game of pickup football, Papu suffered a devastating blow to his left leg.

The left foot that he planted in the mud was injured when he was tackled.

The extent of the injury caused that leg to become amputated.

I think the closest that we ever got to being able to do that was just sharing videos at school.

But on a larger scale, being able to like, you know, tell my parents, “Hey, my video is going to show on PBS, like hey, let's go, let's go watch it.” And them also being very proud of that moment in time that we can kind of celebrate this, it was, it was exhilarating to have been a part of the experience.

One trend we saw in the first season of HIKI NŌ was stories about different factions of community coming together to solve a problem.

Coincidentally, two such stories centered around football: One dealt with building a place to play, the other dealt with the lights needed to play at night.

We go first to the windward side of O‘ahu, for Field of Dreams by the students of Kalāheo.

It was a, a place that we could actually be taken seriously, and as much as we can, uh, learn from the process.

And that's what I, I really appreciated with this opportunity and, and being able to have the interaction with our mentor and, uh, alongside with my, uh, teacher, uh, my digital media teacher.

And this whole synergetic relationship, just making sure that there's all of these avenues or, or, uh, people to go through in order to make sure that this, this story gets across and we can actually do something with it.

My real name, first of all, first of all, is Theodore Kamuela Casison, and my stage name from what I started with was actually, when I was in middle school.

I was 15, and I started with, uh, James Cole's United DJs and Musical Youth of Hawai‘i, which is a nonprofit organization.

And he gave me the stage name Lil Homie TC, but now I just go by TC because I dropped the Lil Homie.

Uh, so in New Hope Leeward, I am the Broadcast Media, uh, Lead for the entire campus and, uh, the entire church as a whole.

I believe my exposure through HIKI NŌ and that whole, uh, experience in and of itself, was very much a, a precursor or a foreshadowing of where I am today.

To see myself get called into this, and, and see my, my very drive and passion in video be used for this calling, it, it really, I had this sense of fulfillment and satisfaction that, uh, it all was working towards a purpose.

So, my family and I are currently in the situation where we are considered homeless.

We do not have a home.

So, a story about early college was actually a gateway for me to share with my friends what had been going on at home, um, and I had shared that story and I remember my classmates stopping the camera, turning to me and said, “Victoria, why didn’t you share this with us before?” So, I told them, I said, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it was that important.

I’m still the same person, I’m, you know, I’m still Victoria.

It just happens to be that one of the circumstances I went through in my life, um, you know, put me and my family in that situation.

So, we’d done the interview and the executive producer at HIKI NŌ had said, um, you know, he’d gone through the interview and saw the tidbit of gold in that interview and pulled that out to make that the bigger story, um, and for us, that was a jumping point of where we should go further.

So, um, not just being the subject of the story, but also helping in the production, I kinda pitched the idea like, ”Hey you know, I can show you where I used to live.” So, I brought my classmates to where I used to live, just to shoot some b-roll, um, they even caught some really good nat sound.

I don’t like going to school because I was afraid that everybody would tease me because I live here.

You know, bringing my classmates to where I’d lived, I think also helps them see what that story is like, to physically be there and to help tell that story, um, is an experience that I think a lot of storytellers need to have, um, to put themselves inside the subject’s shoes.

It hurts me when somebody says, oh, look at that homeless dude sleeping on the sidewalk.

You don’t know their story, don’t judge them for what they couldn’t handle.

I really think that this interview and this story was a vessel.

It wasn’t just about me.

It was the bigger picture, you know, there are hundreds of students, thousands of students, maybe, across the state that are homeless and they still go to school, they still struggle, but they’re trying their best to make sure that they can better themselves and I’m just one of those people.

After participating with HIKI NŌ, um, it really influenced me in my career today.

I saw how important it was to be a storyteller, to share people’s stories, and that if I had a story to tell that other people did as well.

So, I graduated in 2014 and went to school at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet, so I decided to take both film and journalism because they were both passions of mine in high school.

And then when I had graduated, I was still working at UH as a student videographer for our department that I was in, and I had gotten a call from a friend of mine that I had met through my internship at Hawaii News Now, and said, “Hey we have a job opening, a producer job opening at KITV.” Um, I remember just thinking like, you know, I don’t have any experience as a producer.

All I remember producing was a student broadcast I had done in college, um, you know, am I even qualified for this position?

So, I’d taken the job at KITV, and now I’m the producer for the, uh, 6 p.m. show, uh, prime time, Hawaiʻi’s only hour-long newscast and, um, it took a long time to get there and I’m still learning today, as it is.

She always does the on-cameras perfectly.

I really like when she does them.

When I was first hired as a producer at KITV, I didn’t know what they saw in me, when they hired me.

I was just a student, fresh out of college.

I didn’t have any experience as a producer and to take on responsibility of putting together a newscast that people across the state can see was really, really, really nerve-wracking.

I had asked a couple of my colleagues, I said, you know, I had my doubts.

I was like, you know, maybe I don’t belong here or, you know, I’m younger than my anchors, maybe they don’t trust me.

And he said, “You know, they wouldn’t have hired you if they didn’t see something in you.” And you know, just going back to my roots as a storyteller in high school and in college, that that is true, you know, I have that potential that if I can see somebody’s story, then why can’t I do that for an entire newscast?

That there’s stories out there that are important, you know, and I think that they saw that and I think they also saw my drive as a storyteller.

Head room on Camera Two, head room on Camera Two.

I didn’t think I’d be where I’m at today and if it wasn’t for HIKI NŌ, I really wouldn’t be here at all.

And just being able to, you know, share my story at the beginning and now being able to tell the community’s stories, I think, is an amazing feat.

I think that if 17-year-old me saw 24-year-old me now, she’d be super proud.

I hope you were inspired by these five HIKI NŌ Alumni Profiles as much as I was.

They showed that once a student has embraced the HIKI NŌ experience, he or she is ready to achieve whatever they set their sights on.

Be sure to tune in next week for more proof that our alumni HIKI NŌ .

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Can Do!

Next week on HIKI NŌ Alumni Profiles Part Two: Broken down to, like the most basic thing, I’m a storyteller at heart and being able to, you know, start in high school, broadcast journalism, I found my passion for storytelling and through, you know, these stories and these packages, and it’s nice to be able to do that at a, you know, as a career.

Going from a HIKI NŌ student to a HIKI NŌ teacher was definitely a unique experience.

It’s a really fulfilling job and I’m really excited.

If my 16-year-old self was to look at me now, I would think that, wow, she’s come a long way.

I want to be like her.

I am very grateful for HIKI NŌ, um, being able to give me that experience, being able to work with professionals in the field, seeing how they were able to teach us, and also to work with students has inspired me to want to work with students as well.

No, I just wanted to kind of say that really, HIKI NŌ really gave me a chance to shine and really gave me a chance to get a start with my career and without the help, I would not be here.

I would not be here where I am, and I sincerely believe that.

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