Kalaʻi Miller Aloha, I’m Kalaʻi Miller.

With no professional sports teams in the state, the home team is the University of Hawaiʻi Rainbow Warriors.

Season after season, die-hard fans embrace these student athletes and feel the jubilation of wins, as well as the heartbreak of losses.

We kick-off this episode of Home is Here with the story of a local boy who’s back home with his dream job as the head coach of the UH football team.

TV Announcer Chang throws long for Lelie out in front.

Touchdown.

(crowd cheers) Timmy Chang My name is Timothy Kealiʻiokaʻaina Awa Chang.

People know me as Timmy Chang.

You know, born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.

First house 'til 18 years old was in Waipiʻo Gentry.

I grew up before Waikele was ever put in a place and it just looked like sugarcane fields before corp came.

And then, you know, moved to Mililani for my college years.

And my family resided up there and then, you know, been back and forth ever since.

I went to Noelani Elementary, from K to six in Mānoa.

I repeated sixth grade again at Saint Louis, and went from six to 12 at Saint Louis High School.

TV Announcer Chang end zone.

Touchdown Saint Louis.

Timmy Chang I started playing football in seventh grade at Saint Louis High School.

Football is special to me because, um, you know, I watched it and I grew up in Aloha Stadium being a ball boy for my dad who was an official.

It taught me a lot about life and it continues to teach me about life.

What made me decide to stay at the University of Hawaiʻi from high school and having all the success was the opportunity that I saw that June Jones and his offense and his style of play and really the state rallying behind his team at the time.

I have a bunch of favorite memories from my college days.

Probably the best memory I had was giving my father the football during the game when I broke the yards record, Ty Detmer's yards record.

TV Announcer This is for the record.

Into the end zone, touchdown!

(cheers) Jason Rivers.

The 95th career touchdown and the record has been set.

Timmy Chang They stopped the game and, and my dad was a was wearing the red hat and he's the TV official guy on the sidelines calling timeouts, so I didn't have to give him a ticket for the game.

He had the best ticket, you know, being right there on the sidelines.

TV Announcer And the record is now 15,038.

He’s going to take the ball to his father who happens to be on our television crew.

And he’ll give it to Levi Chang.

(cheers) Timmy Chang Giving the ball to him was special to me.

Being highly touted and being the top, one of the top recruits in the country, you know, he, he wanted me to go away and thinking that there was better opportunity.

And for me, it was kind of just showing him like hey, the opportunity is right here, right in front of us, you know, and when it's said and done I want to live here.

I want to be home.

This is my home.

I believe being a Rainbow Warrior, it's special.

There's a there's commitment and expectation to it where you just don't want to don't want to let people down.

You don't want to let the state down.

When I played I felt like I had the state on my back.

It's bigger than just me, it's bigger than just the locker room and the Braddahhood.

It's about representing these people.

This is a very special place.

If you grew up here, you lived here, you get to experience the language, the dance, the music, the culture, the food, and the people, you kind of understand how special it is it is to represent the place and that's kind of how I felt playing.

TV Announcer Chang, eludes one, throws long.

That is complete to Owens.

Timmy Chang June said, you know, if you can handle pressure here, you can handle it anywhere.

He was right, man, it sets you up for, you know, learning at a young age and what's going on, it kind of prepares you for, you know, where you're at today.

You know, I think the stakes are higher, you know, now that I have kids, trying to provide for them.

And then I think that's what drives me.

And really understanding those things early on kind of sets you up for understanding your mindset of how you have to be and how you make decisions, and it becomes real simple.

I make decisions based on my family that keeps me grounded and keeps me in the direction I need to keep going.

(Green, green set.)

Being a local boy having this opportunity, it's special.

These jobs are very coveted.

Being a FBS position coach, NFL position coach, it's hard to get in, it's hard to get these jobs.

But being a being a head coach is, you're at the top of your profession, and it's pretty special being from here, it's one of those reasons why I stayed home and represented the state is that it gave me an opportunity, it opened doors that, you know, I didn't know I was gonna be a coach at the time I was leaving this place, but, but being on that journey, it kind of seemed like the right thing to do and the right path for me to take.

And, and all my decisions kind of went that way but this is special.

It means a lot to me, it means a lot to my family and I don't take it lightly.

(Eyes up, eyes up, eyes up.)

I'm excited to coach local homegrown kids with a mix of mainland guys and to put together a product that can win some games and, and get the state excited and get this university program excited about the direction we're heading.

I'm you know, confident that we can get some some really cool things done.

(Heʻa, heʻa, heʻa, heʻa, heʻa) All the things that I got to experience staying home, you know, share it with some of these guys and give give some amazing kids and recruits and some and some guys on our team, some unbelievable experiences and, and opportunities when it's said and done.

(Chanting) My coaching style is compassionate, caring, loving.

I love my guys, and trying to develop them.

Trying to make them the best version of themselves, you know, on and off the field.

I think that's all important.

When parents give their, their kids to us, they want us to help lead and guide them correctly.

Just kind of making them overall complete people is our goal and my goal.

When I talk to our players and our guys and the guys that I've coached in the past, a lot of the things that they're going to be and lean upon later on in life is the lessons learned on this football field and off the field and the things that took them to achieve greatness or just be on the football team and sacrifice and just the little things.

There's so many, there's so many little life lessons learned inside this game that it just kind of helps build for your future.

(Crowd cheering) Being the dad and having a lot of kids I try to relate the lessons very closely.

You know, sometimes I fall short like any parent would, but you try to give your kids the best opportunity.

You try to give your kids the most love, most compassion, care about them, let them know that you want them to be great and hopefully I'm doing that.

A lot of commitment is taken with this job and so um, if I'm if I'm not coaching football, I'm at home with my family.

Raising my kids here is really important.

As long as I'm being able to provide I think that's the number one goal and the University of Hawaiʻi gave me that opportunity.

This program gave me the opportunity.

It makes it extra special that I'm from here and my, my family gets to experience, all the kids and the grandkids and you know, my mom, I know she loves it, my sisters, I know they love it.

And so, it's special, and I get to see them kind of enjoy the things that I've enjoyed.

And the treats that I've I've grown up loving my life and so it's, it makes it really really special in that sense and so very happy.

My family has been my support team.

They're by my side thick and thin.

My wife is is unbelievable, my wife Sherry.

She's my everything.

She kind of is the rock, not kind of but is the rock of the family.

She allows me to do what I have to do to provide but you know, she's she's been a great mom.

We've been on this journey together.

I still remember telling her in Canada that I wanted to get in this profession.

And she supported me never wavered, never hesitated and, and, you know, we made the journey together and you know, through so many different states in so many different places, but we're finally here and she's gonna make a great head coach's wife and I'm happy for her.

I'm happy for us.

She deserves everything.

She deserves all the credit.

I tell my players that whether I was coaching in a position room, or I was coaching, now being a head coach, and I sit in front of them, and I tell them, guys, you're not going to remember all the plays.

And you're not going to remember all the things that that go on during the game, but you will remember your relationships, you will remember the locker room, you’ll remember traveling on the road, you'll remember being on the bus rides, you remember those times of being together and guys, and that's what you'll miss the most.

You'll miss the relationships.

It's only for a short amount of time man that you're there three, four or five years and that's it, but those relationships are everything and they carry you down the road.

Kalaʻi Miller Nestled in the Haiʻkū Valley on the island of Oʻahu, Hui Kū Maoli Ola is the largest Native Hawaiian plant nursery in the world.

What started out as a hobby in the early 90s has turned into full-fledged retail nursery, plant supplier, and landscape restoration service with the mission to preserve native species and to perpetuate Hawaiian history and culture…one plant at a time.

Rick Barboza Aloha.

My name is Rick Barboza.

I am the co-owner of Hui Kū Maoli Ola which is a native Hawaiian plant, nursery and landscaping company.

Me and my business partner Kapaliku Sherman.

We started the company back in 1999, but we’ve been growing native plants since we were in college probably from around ʻ97.

And the whole point of us getting involved with it was, you know, we were kind of taken back that all of the plants that we kind of grew up with, that we thought were Hawaiian, weren't Hawaiian.

So all of the puakenikenis and the plumerias and the pikakes and the red gingers and the ʻawapuhi melemeles—all those plants aren’t native to Hawaii, they’re not even, you know Polynesian introduced.

They’re all recently introduced plants that in some places some of them actually have become invasive species.

Once we realized what wasn’t Hawaiian, then we kind of wanted to know what was Hawaiian, and why aren’t these plants available for people to purchase?

And why is it so hard to find these plants in the wild?

And the more that we learned, the more we realized, like, oh, my gosh, you know, something needs to be done.

We were kind of tossing the idea around to see where we could run with this business.

And so we gave ourselves a year, but if it didn't pan out in a year, then we'd go back to school.

And, you know, luckily for me, I only have my Bachelor's still, I never went back to school.

When we made that decision, like, okay, we'll stick with this for a year.

I hadn't graduated yet.

Throughout college, I was a sushi chef in Waikīkī and one night, these two guys came and sat down at the bar.

And the younger guy started talking to me.

Oh is this all you do?

You know, you just do sushi.

I was like, Nah, man, I'm actually graduating with my zoology degree in a couple of weeks.

And on the weekend, me and my friend, we have this native plant nursery, where we just grow all these, you know, rare and endangered plants.

And he's like, Oh, really, and he's like, oh you guys interested in selling those plants?

And I was like, oh, yeah, sure, you know, but thinking that, you know, some guy from Ohio or wherever he's from, wants to take back a couple of plants, you know, back home with him.

And he goes, can you produce a lot of these plants?

I'm like, brah we’re huge, you know, like, just relative, just gassing him at the moment.

And I was like, Yeah, we're like, the biggest native plant nursery on Oʻahu.

But really, I mean, we probably were, but at the time, we only had like, a, you know, two tables of plants.

And he goes, Well, you know, that's really awesome.

He goes, let me give you my card.

I'm the Executive live goods buyer, for the Home Depot.

And we'd be interested in selling your plants.

I then my reply to him was, what the hell is a Home Depot?

Cuz they're, they're building the first Home Depot, and I didn't know what Home Depot was, you know?

So he's like, Oh, it's huge retail place.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, whatever.

So I take his card.

I kind of forgot about it.

And then two weeks later, and I'm digging through my wallet and I find this card.

I’m like, hey, we should go check out this Home Depot place and see, see what it’s about you know.

And so we pull up to the first location in Hawaiʻi, which is on, uh in Iwilei, and we’re just like, “Whaaat?!

This place is huge!” you know.

Yeah, so it was kind of that moment we’re like, “okay this could actually lead to something.” And then we started supplying Home Depot with native plants that allowed you know, a significant or reliable cash flow into the company that kind of kept us actually kept us really busy in the beginning when Home Depot first opened.

And then since then we've also got City Mill to supply our plants.

And so it's the actual output of plants going into the community has doubled within the last year because of the City Mill.

Abby Snyder My name is Abby Snyder, and I'm a plant nursery worker.

I also got trained to be a driver.

So I now do regular deliveries and we deliver to Home Depots and City Mills on island.

And that's great because we get to put out educational signs about the plants too.

So that's one way that we're able to share the knowledge that we have here and my talk with with each other.

We get to share that knowledge with the general public now.

So I love being able to do that.

And when I'm putting out plants people will stop me and ask Oh, is this certain hibiscus native?

Is this the one that smells really good?

Is that the one that smells like trash?

So we get to talk a little bit about what plants do what and how they can also grow them in their own yards.

Rick Barboza In addition to the native plants we also are heavily invested with time to have Polynesian introductions also made available to people.

So plants like kalo, banana, sweet potato, sugarcane, breadfruit.

So we have 65 different varieties of Hawaiian kalo cultivars, we have a handful of different Hawaiian banana cultivars.

Not only do they are they important or important culturally, they actually look certain cultivars look really good in the landscape, so it helps with creating edible landscapes.

We've scaled up the company, we originally started in Waimānalo.

And then we moved here in 2005-ish.

We've also expanded our services to do you know, habitat restorations, but then we also are licensed landscape contractors.

And what we try to do as much as possible is to treat each home or business or any place that we're landscaping, like how we would an actual habitat restoration.

So if we're doing a house over in Wailupe, we want to make sure that the plant material comes from the southern Koʻolaus basically expanding the gene pool.

Our native plants that are extremely rare aren't rare because they're difficult to grow.

I don't have a horticulture degree.

So it's not the plants fault.

It's just the the pressures and the impacts from just overdevelopment, invasive species or you know, being predated upon by, by introduced mammals.

That's the real problem.

Abby Snyder The plants here have a lot more meaning to the people here.

There's a lot more tradition behind it.

And it's great that we can also take plants that are either endangered or on the verge of going extinct and re propagate them and make sure that there's more again, what is it like 10 percent of plants have gone extinct here.

So being able to work on that issue.

That feels awesome.

Rick Barboza Me and my business partner Kapaliku Sherman, we came up with the name, actually a friend of ours came up with the name, which combines the two of our Hawaiian names.

So my name is Kaponowaiwaiola his Hawaiian name is Kapaliku which is the Ola and the Kū in the name.

But Hui Kū Maoli Ola translates to the organization that stands up for native life.

And basically we're just here to you know, make sure that our our native plants has a rightful place to be back in the land that they were kind of removed from and making them available for people to continue cultural practices utilizing the plants.

Nalani Kaio What I love about Hui Kū is that it brings awareness to the native Hawaiian plants and the indigenous of the fauna and flora around here.

And in a way, this place really helps for people to understand that don't understand that 80 percent of the fauna and flora that we have here are invasive species and not native.

So it's really important that we have this place and bring it back to life.

Rick Barboza So this right here is hoʻawa.

And hoʻawa is in the genus pittosporum.

And in the landscape industry, they've used pittosporum from all over the world in Hawaiʻi’s landscapes for a long time.

But we have over 10 different species of pittosporum that's native to Hawaiʻi.

And so what we want to do is try to make these plants available.

And what's cool about this one is that it provided the food source or it's one of the favorite foods of our native crow, which is the ʻalalā.

So what’ll happen is this seed capsule its fruit will open up so it's kind of like a showcase to the birds like eh come eat these seeds you know and then they disperse the seeds everywhere.

And the ʻalalā, or the Hawaiian crow was one of those birds that fed upon this but it was also seed disperser for the plant, you know, so I didn't expect those guys to be ready at this point.

But they look good.

Yeah they’re hard and everything, cool.

I might actually try and experiment with these to see if I can get them to germinate faster because sometimes takes over a year for the seeds to germinate.

So but yeah, I'll try I'll put this guy keep this guy over there.

Come back for him later.

Kalaʻi Miller They’re easy to eat, go great with milk or coffee and make for a delicious dessert.

I’m talking about cookies.

My favorite flavor is peanut butter which is also the favorite of Makawao resident, Mitzi Toro.

Here’s how her creativity and love of baking, helped her become, The Maui Cookie Lady.

Mitzi Toro Who could be sick of a cookie like, I don't think I've ever tasted a bad cookie, to be honest with you.

It's a really fun business to be in.

I love all kinds of cookies.

So I was born in a little beach town called El Segundo, California.

And that's where I grew up.

It was my parents that moved here first, before me.

They had retired here.

And I was close to them growing up so I kind of had to make that decision early on.

So I moved right after high school to Maui.

And I started baking the very first recipe in high school.

I was shy and nervous.

It was a really kind of bigger Los Angeles School.

And I remember the first day, Mrs. Merrick came out with freshly baked cookies and it just calmed me down.

So, I asked her for the recipe and I started baking that recipe on a regular basis at school.

I would bake late at night, but I was always nervous that I would eat it all, so I would bring it to work and give it away.

But I just love the part of creating the recipes.

And it just, I just love the happiness in that moment.

That it just people are just so excited to have food and baked goods and, and so I was always kind of just baking for friends, neighbors and teachers.

But when my father passed away, suddenly, I just started baking.

It was a way to celebrate his life and I'd bake for the nurses that helped him in the ICU unit that that final week.

So yeah, so it was just a way to kind of celebrate his life and then give back to the nurses.

When I was in the hospital you know, anybody who has been through that process, have seen a loved one.

You know, at the end of their life, you have an appreciation for the people who are there and the nurses were phenomenal.

So, I originally thought maybe I would do a fundraiser for new couches because we we slept on those couches in a waiting room for for a week and they had already had some plans in place to remodel.

So I said well, I you know, I'm just, I'm just gonna just do a blanket fundraiser.

So we we dedicated all the funds for four months for the nurses.

And it was great.

It was, it gave me closure.

And it just, I felt like I had just kind of this new passion for life again.

We first started selling our cookies at the Wailuku town party.

And it was once a month, it was a Friday night.

And that was where the fundraiser was and we started a second at the Kihei town party.

It was just neat to see that people were coming back over and over.

I'm self taught, it was just a passion, so I wasn't, wasn't sure if it was just a novelty, or if it would wear off.

And so, it turned to a hobby, and then kind of an expensive hobby.

And then I I realized I kind of had to make the decision, I was either going to just completely give it up or maybe I should just try to do this full time for a year and just kind of see where it goes.

My father passed away in 2012 and so when we did the fundraiser that was 2012, and I officially made it a business February 1, 2013 and that was his birthday so significant for me.

And then when I made the decision to do it full time, it was 2015.

You know my husband supported me from day one.

I couldn't imagine doing this journey without his help.

He is always my cheerleader.

At the beginning before I had staff, I know he's just like big macho local guy and he's putting on a hairnet and rolling cookie dough at 11 o'clock at night, after we put the baby to bed.

So he has been just a rock and my strength.

He knew that I had a future.

He supported me and he said, "Why don't we, why don't we build you a commercial kitchen?

Let's do this right."

He spent his nights and weekends for a year building me my dream kitchen.

For me, what has been more of a factor in my daily life is, it's just being a mompreneur.

Having balance with your family is really key.

And it's difficult when you're in the startup mode, and you are wanting to start a business, you don't work nine to five you work from the moment you open your eyes in the morning till you put your head down at night.

I don't have a nine to five and so as a mother, that is my biggest priority and as a wife so when I first started I, I didn't have that balance.

I had this incredible support of my husband and family but then at some point I realized I just couldn't do it all.

And when you get one or two really solid key employees, it allows you to kind of take some breathing room and allows you to then get everything back in balance.

There's been a couple of times we grew too quickly and a couple of things happened.

I wasn't able to keep control on the quality and I wasn't, and it wasn't, I didn't like my job as much because the logistics of growing a company quickly is the things I'm not very good at.

So I decided twice when we when we were experiencing really fast growth to pull back.

I had always wanted a storefront in the heart of Makawao town because that's where my heart is.

That's where our kitchen is, you know, my father is buried at St. Joseph's, it's where my family is.

The owner of the store, the family the Tam Yau family, who started all the stores in Makawao town.

They, they had heard about us and they had heard that our kitchen was built on a property where Barbara Tam had grown up and they heard we were looking for a store so it's like you know in Hawaiʻi, it's not what you know, it's who you know, and so somebody had told them hey, I think The Maui Cookie Lady is looking for a storefront if you have anything available.

And the store that they offered me was my father's favorite store because there's a giant clock on the outside.

And my father was born and raised in Germany.

He came to this country knowing very little English and Germans, they love clocks and chocolate.

And it was like cookie destiny.

The decor in the store was inspired, really by my father and I saw this photo on Pinterest that had this cute little Bavarian village and I thought that would be kind of fun to do it whimsical and magical and something fun for kids to come to.

We opened before Christmas of 2020.

My favorite movie growing up was Willy Wonka.

And so, I've always had a love and fascination for candy.

And so when I was in high school, I would just you know, experiment with different candies.

But then you live here and we have agriculture just growing right here on our kitchen property.

I have lilikoi outside, we have a guava tree, we have two different types of lemon trees.

Everything grows, everything is in abundance.

And so there is pretty much an endless combination of possibilities here.

We are so blessed and so lucky to live in Hawaii that we can go out and I can get lavender from Alii Kula Lavender and our macadamia nuts are from Waihee farms.

So everything is made by hand.

It's in 20-quart mixers.

We have 3, 20-quart mixers.

So each each batch makes about 50 cookies and we probably do anywhere from four to 700 cookies a day.

I don't think the cookie has anything extra ordinary in the sense that somebody could probably figure out how to make it.

For us, the key ingredient is love.

And all of our staff is incredibly dedicated.

And I really could not be where I'm at without our staff and our employees are so important to us.

So everybody takes pride.

And one thing that we've done which is really neat is we let our employees create a cookie.

So some of our best flavors or most popular flavors have not come from me they've come from our employees.

Every time we make a connection with the customer, it's more than butter, sugar and eggs.

It's a relationship and it's an honor.

And then we see people gifting our cookies for loved ones.

For me, there is nothing, there's no bigger responsibility then when somebody gives somebody they love, it says this is the best and you're worth it.

So we take every order really seriously.

Kalaʻi Miller Thank you for joining us.

For previous episodes and digital exclusive content, go to PBS Hawaiʻi dot org.

For Home is Here, I’m Kalaʻi Miller, a hui hou.

Timmy Chang The enjoyment is is really succeeding and then being able to share it with the fans and have them rally around you and embrace you.

Rick Barboza But yeh, every house in Hawaiʻi, no excuse, should have an ʻōhiʻa lehua.

Mitzi Toro I have a horrible sweet tooth and I will even on vacation, I will plan my vacation around all the bakeries and the food in the area.