HANALEI — Christian Green and Molly Shea are the first winners of the Colin Mathews Memorial Scholarship at Hanalei School. Their essays on the benefits of staying away from drugs and not even experimenting with drugs were judged the best
HANALEI — Christian Green and Molly Shea are the first winners of the Colin Mathews Memorial Scholarship at Hanalei School.
Their essays on the benefits of staying away from drugs and not even experimenting with drugs were judged the best out of 10 submitted by fellow sixth-graders at the school.
They each won $1,000 scholarships after judges couldn’t decide which essay was the singular best. The other eight entries were judged as excellent and the authors were recognized at a ceremony at the school last week, said Linda Mathews.
The scholarships are named for Colin Mathews, who on March 28, 2008, died after taking an unknown amount of oxycontin, a prescription painkiller for which he did not have a prescription.
He was 15, a sophomore at Kapa‘a High School at the time of his death, and earlier attended Hanalei School. His parents, Linda and Conrad Mathews, live in Princeville.
Craig Mathews, 13, who is about to graduate from St. Catherine School in Kapa‘a and enroll as a freshman at Kapa‘a High in the fall, is the brother of Colin Mathews, and made the presentations at Hanalei School.
Linda Mathews said she would love to get enough funds to expand the scholarship program to other schools, and said a business she started after her son’s death, a home-party jewelry business with 10 percent of the proceeds going to the scholarship fund, has helped her in her continuing grieving process.
There will also be an annual fundraiser at some point, she said.
Conrad Mathews is a musician and carpenter, and Linda Mathews also works at Hanalei Vacations.
The scholarship can be used toward middle-school or high-school tuition if the students go to a school that charges admission. Otherwise the money will go toward college education.
Linda Mathews said that if she and her husband were totally unaware that their son was experimenting with drugs, other parents are likely in the same position.
“We didn’t ever think it was an issue in our family,” and then her son overdosed, she said. “It was just so unbelievably tragic.
“We just wanted to try to make a positive impact,” she said.
Normally, the Colin Mathews Memorial Scholarship at Hanalei School will be a single, $1,500 award, she said.
• Paul C. Curtis, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@kauaipubco.com
