• Lifeguards deserve more credit for outstanding work • We must do our best to get along • Lifeguards deserve more credit for outstanding work Aloha, Garden Island, and thank you for the short piece about our lifeguards rescuing a man at
• Lifeguards deserve more credit for outstanding work • We must do our best to get along •
Lifeguards deserve more credit for outstanding work
Aloha, Garden Island, and thank you for the short piece about our lifeguards rescuing a man at Pila, one of our very remote North Shore beaches.
Maybe one out of 50 great lifeguard rescues gets publicized, which is fair enough. If the Garden Island were to publicize every lifeguard rescue, every firefighter response, every police domestic intervention, and every paramedic resuscitation, there would be little room left for other news. Since the Pila rescue did make it to press, I can’t resist this opportunity to thank and praise our amazing lifeguards.
I’ve seen them return black and blue and scraped up from their daring jet ski rescue at remote beaches, after speeding half-airborne for a couple of miles (or more) through the Hawaiian trade-wind chop.
This is way beyond the old bring-your-lunchbox-and-sit-at-the tower days. A lot of training is involved, in addition to their prerequisite water skills. Thanks to their jet ski work, their ATV responses (including preventive patrols up and down long stretches of beach) and, of course, their more traditional swim-out-and-get-them rescues, dozens of lives are saved every year by our lifeguards. Dozens of families live to enjoy their future time together.
Strong work, men and women of the Ocean Safety Bureau!
Monty Downs
President, Kauai Lifeguard Association
We must do our best to get along
To clarify some things in “Cat death sparks tension” article, where TGI printed: “It’s a local thing, sometimes a dog gets out and that happens.”
I did not mean that it’s a local thing for our dogs to get out and attack animals. I meant it’s the local way for when things like this happen, such as a dog getting loose, for neighbors to work things out together.
Where the paper printed that I said, “The dog’s instinct would be to run up to the cat, circle and sniff it,” that is actually what my neighbor, who saw the whole thing, told the reporter what initially happened.
I just wanted to clear up some things that I felt were misleading in the paper.
I have had cats before, inside and outside house cats, and my dogs have never bothered them. My dogs provide food for my family and I will forever be grateful to them for that. Therefore, I treat and love my dogs like family.
As neighbors, we should try to get along with each other and not find ways to kick them out of the community. I’ve had neighbors do things I don’t always agree with and have had neighbors’ tree leaves fall in my yard, but I don’t bother because we live in such close vicinity to each other. If you want to live in a place where everything is only as you want, then go live on a deserted island all by yourself.
Brad Chikahiro
Waimea
