After saving ten years for a dream trip to Hawai‘i, Thorpe and Kara Schoenle of Chicago visited Kaua‘i in March. The parents of three children also looked forward to coming to Kaua‘i for much-needed relaxation. The March 18-25 visit to
After saving ten years for a dream trip to Hawai‘i, Thorpe and Kara Schoenle of Chicago visited Kaua‘i in March. The parents of three children also looked forward to coming to Kaua‘i for much-needed relaxation.
The March 18-25 visit to Kaua‘i was not the idyllic vacation the Schoenles had envisioned.
Kara Schoenle, a homemaker, broke her arm during a reef walk and required hospitalization. Her husband, a Chicago firefighter, lost $15,000 in heirloom jewelry at the Wal-Mart store in Lihu‘e.
Upon returning home, the couple got the good news: Helen Obrero of Anahola had found the jewelry and returned it.
Recovery of the jewelry was unexpected, Kara Schoenle said, but reconfirmed her faith in people, that given the chance, honesty will prevail.
She said the gesture has cemented her friendly ties to Kaua‘i, which she first visited with her parents in the 1991 when she was 17 years old.
“It was just nice to be able to experience that (honesty) from people,” Kara Schoenle said in a phone interview with The Garden Island from her home in Chicago. “You just think there aren’t honest people out there anymore. You see people trying to get away with things.”
The couple’s goal was to spend their 10th wedding anniversary in paradise. In March, they dropped their three children off with grandparents in Washington state.
The couple needed a calming getaway from their daily responsibilities. She is a busy homemaker, and her husband is a Chicago firefighter and a part-time computer instructor.
The couple flew to Kaua‘i on March 18, and went to Wal-Mart to buy all the necessities to make their dream vacation become a reality. The flight to Kaua‘i was her husband’s first trip to the Hawaiian Islands.
The view of the ocean from their hotel at Nukoli‘i, the whiff of ocean spray and the splashing of waves enticed the Schoenles.
Schoenle woke up her husband at 5 a.m. on March 19, and began a morning walk on the reef, taking in the sights of the mountains and oceans from the shoreline.
The couple grabbed flashlights and searched the reef. Kara Schoenle took photos of the sun rising with her new digital camera.
“Everything we thought Hawai‘i was going to be was true,” she said. Two hours into the walk, Schoenle said she went airborne, fell and broke her arm. Her new camera fell into the water as well.
She and her husband spent the rest of the day at Wilcox Hospital, where her broken arm was put in a temporary cast. She also was put on painkillers.
Her surgery had to wait, she was told, because only more serious surgeries could be done on weekends.
The Schoenles had traveled thousands of miles to Hawai‘i, and wanted to make the most of their vacation.
For two days, they went sightseeing, including a tour boat ride to the Na Pali Coast with Blue Dolphin Charters.
On March 22, Kara Schoenle went in for surgery at Wilcox Hospital to have a titanium rod and two screws put in her arm.
For safe keeping before the surgery, her husband took her necklace, two rings (a wedding set), her father’s and mother’s wedding ring, which has been in her family for 45 years, and a diamond pendant necklace given to her by her husband on the third wedding anniversary.
The jewelry slipped out of her husband’s pocket while walking around Wal-Mart store.
Schoenle said she got out of surgery on March 23, and another visiting couple, Stan and Tam Neibauer of Placerville, Ca., apparently after hearing of her bad luck, sent flowers.
The California couple, who stayed at the same hotel, met the Schoenles by accident during a dinner.
Over the next two days, the Schoenles posted reward signs, put advertisements in newspapers, contacted radio personalities to tel
