Vanished in Paradise: Dark Secrets of Hawaii’s Big Island

"Didn't understand how Dane herself placed could be." "Every time anybody does this wrong, something horrible happens to them." "Now I do." "There's a lot of people going missing. It's a little scary." "It's almost like the Bermuda Triangle." Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just clump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. "Maybe it's Mavilyne." "There's something going on on the big island. There are too many people that just disappear into thin air." "Three days for every disappearance. They robbed her, tried strangling her knees." Sleeping bag was missing. Almost like he was taken in the middle of the night. "This is crazy. People are just banishing a couple of traces of her." "Is somebody who lives on this island, you believe that there is bad stuff happening to people?" "I don't believe it's actually happening." "The island either accepts you or eats you alive." "Sometimes the island takes something as a sacrifice." "I wish for my revenge." "Yeah!" "You're going to get the f*** out of me." "What happened?" "Like, he's just gone." "No, no, no, no, no." This is law and crime. Investigates. It would seem impossible for an island, a body of land, to summon people. But somehow, the island of Hawaii does. Positioned at the very end of the Hawaiian Islands, below Maui, the big island, as it's called, is vast and isolated. And that's why it calls to people. Calls them to its commanding mountains, intoxicating rainforests, and its brooding volcanoes. Its beauty makes people think, "Nothing bad happens here." The big island has kept its secret, the secret of its missing people until now. So we wore this a lot. Tiger necklace, we wore that all the time, and then he had this sword that he'd keep on my bed. That was his. So here's us when we were in football. He was 69, I was 96, my dad thought that was hilarious. That was a twin. Was a twin. This is the first time I've ever been just an individual now. I feel like half a person. I don't even like my own birthday anymore, because we shared it. So I think he got murdered. He might be floating around the ocean or buried somewhere rotting, you know, without anyone knowing where he's at and loving him anymore. Sucks. Kelly Grabitt is one of nearly 100 people who have disappeared from the big island of Hawaii in just the past five years. That's about one person every two to three weeks. Please have a determine for sure what happened to any of these missing people. They're just gone. The department has suspended most of their missing person's investigations due to lack of leads, leaving 100 families, hundreds of people when you do the math, not knowing what happened to their loved ones. It's really quite staggering when you think about it. We wanted to get more specifics from the Hawaii Police Department, but the department declined to participate with us. During the course of this investigation, you'll hear several stories of the missing. Many of them begin like Kelly Grabitt's. People from the mainland who go to the big island looking for serenity and escape. So he was deployed to Afghanistan when he was only 20 years old at that time. And February 2, 2010, they hit an ID and they ended up taking everybody's lives to Kelly's. And he was airlifted to Faub Lagman and had half his leg missing and had shrapnel in his face, shrapnel in his arm. He had a traumatic brain injury. The surgeon told me when it's going to tell you it doesn't look good, I don't think he's going to make it. And we went to Walter Reed and we did a lot of medical work there at Walter Reed. It was awarded a purple heart. It took a couple of years to grow skin back. We're living up river here in the state of Oregon. And September 8th of 2020, a major force fire hit. Fire plays standing in my yard. We burned 517 homes and we lost every single thing that we owned. 5 months after that, my wife passed. And now we lost everything. Kelly decided he wanted to move to a wife. A friend of his was moving there and he thought it'd be a good place to try to heal. He was looking for peace and tranquility. And at first Kelly found it on the Big Island in an area called Pahoa. It's the place a lot of people find themselves when they come to live their new life on the Big Island. But it's not considered a safe area. It has a lot of drugs, theft and break ins. Downtown Pahoa is a handful of homeless drugs. There's nowhere else to go. That is a tiny, tiny fraction of what's going on in downtown Pahoa. It's not safe. In fact, after we analyze public police records, a pattern emerged. Of the 93 disappearances we tracked from the last five years, most people were last seen in three areas. Hilo, Kailua Kona, and Pahoa. Not coincidentally, those places are among the island's highest crime communities. But despite all that, Kelly's father Jeff Gravitt's senior says Kelly loved the Big Island. He loved the tie dye. He loved what they called Sunday, Monday, doing the drum circles. He liked natural healing medicines. He liked to be able to go pick fruit and be able to eat right off the land. And no matter how hard Kelly Gravitt tried to be one of them, a local, he couldn't because he wasn't born there. He wasn't a native. He was an outsider. And it's not easy to be one on the Big Island. The locals call them, people like Kelly, Howellies. You got harassed when he first moved there. I think they treated my brother as almost an invader. Somebody kidnapped him and held him for about 36 hours. And he got loose, convinced him to let him go. He accused him of stealing some things. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Jeldermist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Maybe it's Mabelie. He didn't need to steal anything. He had a military pension and a social security retirement. And he wasn't desperate for money. He flew home and he stayed with me for, I don't know, two, three months. And I told me all about it. And then he said, you know, I really kind of missed Hawaii and those people. We called them his people. Even though that happened, he decided he missed it. And he wanted to go back. And in fact, he even convinced me to wanting to go. And so, you know, he's living in Hawaii, I'm living in Hawaii. I was living on a 26-acre Mimaki tee farm up in the hills. We'd meet every weekend. He comes to my place. I'd meet him over there. We're in the meeting at the store. And I saw him all the time. We were extremely close. Not only were we father's time, but we were like brothers too. Kelly didn't live with his father. He chose to live at an off the grid compound called Cinderland. Cinderland bills itself as an eco village focused on sustainability and is a place for contemplation, education, and unity. He chose to be with those that were struggling and those that were looking for a family. And that rainbow family drew him in. And he did not have the capacity to see through that they were not genuine people. It's a cult, in my opinion. It's not just her opinion. In 2017, CNN featured Cinderland in a documentary on Doomsday Colts. The leader calls himself Hazeus and is a Messiah. of sorts to the people who'd live there. And although stories of alleged crime happening at Cinderland aren't hard to find online, local police pretty much stayed away. Even though Cinderland was an illegal community operating without proper permits, local police never shut it down until our investigation. In the fall of 2025, police dismantled the community and fined the owner for not having proper permits. Cinderland may have always operated in a vacuum, but it still had its own rules and Kelly violated one of them. In December 2022, five months before Kelly's disappearance, people at Cinderland accused him of accidentally starting a fire when he fell asleep one night. - You know what, the biggest mistake we did is not getting the f*** out of here the other night. - After his disappearance, Kelly's family later discovered videos on Facebook of people in Cinderland confronting Kelly. They gave the videos to police. - You know how you did it, Cal? You did it with the lamp oil. No, but if you must have knocked. I don't know. You burnt that camp. Kelly was forced to flee Cinderland after he said the residents there threatened him. Kelly's friend, Honda, recorded this video Kelly a few weeks later describing what happened. - Anyway, I thought it would be nice to ask. - Kel, what happened at Cinderland though? - You know, it's told me to leave. And I start collecting on my things. And, but I guess it wasn't leaving fast enough 'cause it started picking up shovels and bamboo. It sort of chased me around. I made a mistake of picking up something to try to defend myself, because I was really scared for my life. And then so they started coming out of your harder, like you know, you don't kind of talk to me with their weapons. So finally I just tossed my down. I said, okay, I'm leaving. Please just let me leave in peace. And I walked to my car, and I got my car, and I left in peace. I've been trying to get in contact, but he's used to let him know that, you know, if there's anything that's come out of pocket because of this I'd like to reimburse him. - I just say everybody, I love y'all. And you guys scared me. And I'm sorry that you feel certain feelings, but there's truth and there's illusion, and that's up for you to decide. - But it seems the people of Cinderland weren't ready to move on. His family also discovers this disturbing video on Facebook, which they also sent to police. - You're a trouble maker. You burned down your account before you left, and look at it. - I didn't burn it down, and I said I'll pay you back next month, and I will. I'll be part of it, and I'll be $300. - Yeah, and you said you were part of it? - I was an accident man, and I'll pay for it. - I tried to think you got a problem. - I've been trying to get a hold of you for like months, but you never, you don't get a hold of me. - The video was posted about a month before Kelly's disappearance. Around the same time, April of 2023, Kelly grab it, found himself in trouble again. Late at night, outside a local bar. - I saw a minivan and a couple motorcycles pull up, and I told my friend something bad about to happen, and so I told my phone out, and so I recorded it. (beep) - I told him so he was like that, huh? - Eric Meeker, a local resident, recorded the heated exchange. He recalls how he watched Kelly lie down in the street. - Kelly literally has his knees planted on the ground, and his shoulders on the ground. He's submitting completely. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. - You can clearly hear them yelling. She won't say please, please, please, please, please, please, please. - You know, he's apologizing to them. For whatever he's apologizing for. (indistinct chatter) - On May 9th, 2023, Kelly Grabit, post for the last time on Facebook, a picture of him with a black eye. Even though Kelly lost his phone shortly before disappearing, his friends and family are calling and texting, trying to reach him. - I realized by my May 12th that, no, he's, I can't get a hold of him. He hasn't called me. You know, there's something wrong. My birthday is May 19th, and my birthday comes around. I don't hear from him. - As soon as we lost communication, and it's just, it was like a really strong feeling, like something very bad happened. - You know, when I went to the post office, 'cause he would get his mail, general delivery. - He had packages there from May 8th to May 12th that he had never picked up. So that was a huge red flag. I go to where he lived at, right? - Since getting kicked out of Cinderland, Kelly had been living in this makeshift camp. - Nobody wanted him around in this war era, went in camp in the woods by-- - Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Sheldon mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. Try new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. - Maybe it's Maybelline. - I'm cell phone, some empty properties, and it left him completely vulnerable. - Looking around and I find his nicotine vape pen on the ground by the road, and his sleeping bag was gone, and so it looked like he'd been inducted. - Jeff files a missing persons report with the Hawaii Police Department. Police don't list Kelly as an at-risk missing person. Despite the fact that Kelly had medications, he needed to take for his traumatic brain injury and suffered from PTSD. - I got assigned an detective. He was on the case for two days, and then he went on a two-week vacation, right? Then he gets back, he's back for two days, and then he goes out on medical leave for a week. Then he gets back to work for two weeks, and then he goes on off-Island training for a week. So I have this detective that's literally not there. You know, I'm calling him, I'm calling the captain, I'm calling the chief of police, I'm calling the deputy chief, I'm just exasperated. I don't understand, you know. - Jeff and Kelly's family and friends start doing their own police work. I went everywhere, you know, he hung out and talked to hundreds of people. I have all these flyers made, and then I put a $10,000 reward on them, and then I bumped it up real quick to $20,000 reward. - The baby shop contacts me, he said, "Hey, your son came in here every week. This week he came in with an unknown female, we've never seen her before." And stuff, and we have it on the video camera, right? So you can tell the police, they can come in and get it. So I told the police about it, and never went and got the video. They went to go get it after six months, and like, "Sorry, I've been recorded over." - Later that summer, Kelly's family, again, finds a disturbing video on Facebook and turns it over to police. It was posted a few months after Kelly's disappearance. It's two men discussing another burned down camp. Kelly's name comes up. You know every time anybody does this wrong, something horrible happens to them. Remember, Cal? Any bird might cap? - Yeah. - No. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, - Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Now, shortly after Kelly's disappearance, one of Kelly's friends makes it his mission to find out what happened to Kelly. The friend receives a series of Facebook messages, which he turns over to Kelly's family, and they, again, send to police. The first comes from a man who knew Kelly. He writes, "Where's Kelly? What's your top three guesses of which lava tube?" Kelly's friend pushes back saying, "I want to know who and why." The person goes on, "Kell was easy to get. Just had to wait till he took his nightly drugs and passed out. You would make a little more noise. Believe you are the next target. You the next one down from Kell in the pecking order. Might try to run you off the road on your mo-ped. That's your next week's spot, so a hit and run." In July of 2025, Kelly's friend was found dead in his home in Pahoa. The Big Island Police Department's Criminal Investigative Division is now handling Kelly's case. The FBI is also involved. "My brother said something really eerie to me when I visited him there when I was in the ocean. [BLANK_AUDIO] uh, some jewelry. He said that's the island man. It'll just, it takes something from it. It'll, it's as a sacrifice. He said the island either accepts you or eats you alive. Police have never said publicly if they believe foul play was involved in Kelly's disappearance. But that's not true. In the cases of 54-year-old Joseph Smiley and 41-year-old Jennifer Schoen, police say they believe foul play was involved in both their disappearances, although they aren't saying why. Smiley was last seen, May 2021 at his home in Mountain View, it's a neighboring town of Pahoa. Schoen was living in Pahoa and was last seen at her house in July of 2022. Schoen had moved to the big island from Montana with her two young sons a few years prior. Shortly after she disappeared, police found her red Hummer H3 abandoned. Her two children, without their mother, have since returned to Montana to live with family. It's a similar story to William Bishop Senior. The 76-year-old moved to the big island from Florida around 2020. He was ready to enjoy his retirement, living with his son and spending time with his grandchildren. He would drive the grandkids around to and from school or any other special events. On January 22nd, 2023, he disappeared from his driveway, along with his silver 2019 Toyota Corolla. My father was outside of the house where he lived and he was washing his car. My nephew was outside playing basketball at the same time. My nephew decided he was too hot. I got to go in and cool off, take a shower. So my nephew went in, took a shower, relaxed a bit. He was roughly an hour, then he went back outside and dad was gone. He didn't question it because dad came and went as he pleased. I mean, there was no restrictions on, hey, you know, no would nothing like that. So shortly after, within an hour and a half or two hours, my brother showed up back at home, questioned, hey, where's dad? My nephew said, well, I'm not really sure. I took shower and next I know he was gone. So my brother decided, hey, let's see where he's at. So he tried giving him a call. When he did, my father's phone rang in the bedroom that he was staying in. So my brother went in and looked and there was his phone. There was his wallet. And there was, he had a pouch that he carried vitamins and all these little deses. Everybody's got a little pouch that they bring with them when they go on. The family calls police to report him missing knowing that all this is highly suspicious. They check bishops' property. We'll just check the property real fast. They don't find anything. Oh, clear. They talk to neighbors. I'm here because one of the neighbors on this street is missing. Maybe it's Mabling. William Bishop, are you familiar with him? Last thing yesterday about two o'clock and he just disappeared. They even stop people driving by on the street. Morning, sir. I'm just making checks for a missing person. One of your neighbors down the road, his son is reporting and missing. The family goes through their dad's text messages and emails, but see nothing that indicates William was planning to leave his family. Our dad wouldn't want to leave. He was a family man. He wanted to be there. One month later, in February, a woman arrives at a local precinct. She's driving a car. A silver Toyota Corolla that she admits to officers is not her own. There were drugs in the car? Meth, to be exact. The car is packed with trash. There are cigarette butts and purses. Almost as if someone has been using the car for quite some time. When police go to inspect the then, it's covered with a piece of cardboard. They remove the cardboard, run the then, and lo and behold, it's William Bishop's senior's car. But it's not his license plate. It's a stolen plate. According to police records, the woman told police she took the car from her mom, who had somehow gotten the car a week prior. The mother told police she got the car from some guy with dreads at the beach. She tells police she was picking coconuts. When the man asked her, she wanted to buy the car for $5,000. She said she took it for a test drive, picked up her daughter, stopped at a local grocery store, and that's when her daughter stole the car from her. But it's clear someone had been in the car for more than just a few minutes and had enough time to change the license plate. And then in March 2023, two months after William's disappearance, investigators make a disturbing discovery. They find presence of blood all throughout the car. The floors below the driver and passenger seats on the driver and passenger seats themselves, on the back seat cushions and the middle seatbelt. Police decide they need to ask the mother for questions. The problem is now, they can't reach her. On August 28, 2023, they put out an alert to the community that Big Island resident Roberta Perry is wanted for questioning as a witness to a missing person. On September 5, police, while on an unrelated call, stumble upon Perry. The officer returns to his patrol car and sees that there's an alert out for Perry. He notifies a captain that contact has been made. This is actually one of the captains. So he said he left you a voicemail. He wants to be assured that you know you're not going to be arrested, but yeah, okay. You know what it's kind of what it's regarding though? Okay, thank you. You have a good day. On October 12, Perry comes into the precinct for a polygraph. They ask her if she got William Bishop Senor's car from a guy with dreads, like she says. She tells police yes, but the polygraphs shows she's lie and police let her know. Within seconds, according to police records, Perry drastically changes her story. She says a homeless woman who lives behind the grocery store gave her the car. Despite Perry's shifting story, when police ask her about whether she hurt Bishop or knew about his death, she passes the lie detector. A year later, police determined that all the blood found in Bishop's car is not human blood. I spoke with former NYPD detective Mark Pucci and current private investigator about that. They're saying it's not human blood, but the blood is all over this vehicle. How do you explain that? That would lend me to believe that just some of it had been corrupted or tainted, but any blood being present in a car where the family is saying that the father was this meticulous, very, very neat, clean person. That's a huge red flag because if he accidentally had any kind of blood in his car, he was cleaned it presumptively. Big Island police have publicly called William Bishop's senior's disappearance concerning, but not suspicious. But there's blood in a car and the family is saying that this guy vanished, you know, left his grandson home alone and his phone and his meds and his wallet. How is that not suspicious? Pucci says Bishop's age is also concerning because most retirees don't disappear into thin air. But in our research, we found from the past five years, 13 people ages 65 and over are missing from the Big Island. The average age of the missing person from the Big Island, it's 44 years old, older than the typical missing person, which is usually someone in their 20s or 30s. The age is generally what will be considered outside of the, you know, typical, I'm going to put myself in harm's way. They would actually be risk averse. And a lot of the back stories appear that they were people that had, you know, successfully completed their work careers or raising their families and they were making the conscious choice to go to Hawaii to, you know, ride out into the sunset so to speak and enjoy their later years. The last time the Bishop family heard from police was two years ago. March of 24. That's when police told them they were suspending their father's case. That's when the family took their pleas to Facebook. My name is Jay Bishop and I'm on here because this man right here, William Bishop, is my dad. And you went missing on that island. I've had multiple, and I know my sister has as well, multiple reachouts from people on that island in private messages that will not go to the police because they're worried about their lives. And then on February 10th, 2025, William's son, Jay Bishop, gets a strange text message. I'm sorry to bother you. Are you in any way related to missing older man named William Bishop? Have I replied yes? The guy says, "I'm staying anonymous. This is a burner phone. Sorry." I said, "I understand. Can I ask where you got my phone number?" Because I really don't want to answer that for my own personal safety reasons. And I apologize for this approach. This is what's on the table. I believe most of your answers will come to light. So I said, "Fare enough. I do not want anyone's safety jeopardized. He says, "More on the police side. I'm not sweating that old lady." The bishops believe the old lady is Roberta Perry. "Get police involved after you are at the location. Police won't enter without a search warrant. Probable cause and investigations." So I said, "I assume you're referring to his remains." Then he says, "Once you're there, then call the police and remain on the property. So they have permissions come to you under the search warrant, exception, exigent circumstances." That's the correct and fastest way to do it. I said, "Okay, location, question mark, question mark." He says, "What about the $800?" I said, "The $800, question mark?" The textor responds, "That's what the woman owes the textor." "That's why I'm trying to sell her out for what she owes me. You pay it and then I'll send you the longitude and latitude location you are looking for." So I said, "We have a reward larger than that from information that leads to his remains, but no money goes out to those remains unlucky." He says, "Yeah, I'm aware of that. All I want is my $800." I said, "This message can be your proof. I'm offering you a reward larger than $800. You are asking for it. We get remains from your information. I guarantee you will get paid." And he never replied back. This came February of this year, and I have no idea where he got my number. I mean, I think we've gone through every goal of poster ride, every. Imagine setting your makeup. Then forgetting it's even theirs. Maybe it's Mavilyn. Motion over the two and a half years at this point. We believe he's no longer with us. There's been no sightings. There's been no contact. There's been no movement on his bank account. There's been no signs whatsoever that he is still physically with us. But it's not to say that we are going to give up on attempting to try to have some closure. Our hearts refuse to let go. Connie Fairbanks also will never give up on finding her missing son, Landon Fairbanks. Like the others, his disappearance involves his car. Connie says the last time she saw her 42-year-old son was around 7am on August 3rd, 2022. Landon suffers from bipolar disorder and he had told Connie something disturbing as he left the house that morning. He made the statement that maybe Dustin and I would be better off without him. I said no, Landon. When did you start to realize like, oh my gosh, he's not home? Around noon. So here you are. You're concerned about where he is and then you get a phone call. Right. This woman calls you and what does she say? She said that she had Landon's car and I was like, what? Because you don't know this woman. No, not at all. The woman sends Connie this picture, the last picture of Landon Fairbanks standing next to his car. What did she say is on that piece of paper? It says I landed in Fairbanks and signing over my car. Something to that effect that, you know, I'm signing over my car to whatever her husband's name was and wrote my phone number on the piece paper. Did you ask this woman how she knew your son? Yeah. And she said, I don't know him. She said, well, you're, you know, you should come and get the car. And I said, well, yeah, we're going to come and get the car. But, you know, I wanted to talk to her because they were the last people that saw Landon. And I wanted to find out what she knew. So you called the police and you said, I said, you know, look, I got this call from this woman about my son Landon Fairbanks and that he had left his car on their property. And that was hours ago. And I haven't heard from either. And I said, I want some police to go check this out. Connie jumps in her car and heads to the woman's house. The car was in her driveway on her lawn, where was it in a driveway? So you get there, you see the car. What do you do? Well, she came out. And, you know, I'm asking her these questions about him. And she kept saying, oh, he was just, he was sitting on the sea while waiting for friends to come pick him up. I mean, did you see him getting in the car with someone? Well, no, she was very evasive, you know, on what did you find in the car? I found his backpack, which he never goes anywhere without. I found his wallet and his phone. And that is when I really got conserved. She asked the woman for the note Landon was holding in the picture, but the woman refuses. She would not give me that piece of paper. Did you say to police, can you please go get that piece of paper? Uh-huh. And the detective says to me, oh, well, you know, no, we can't do that. Don't want to make her mad. And I said, I don't give a sh*t about making her mad. I need that piece of paper and why won't she give it to you? Police should have that piece of paper. That's evidence. Police never got that note from the woman. That makes no sense. That is a tremendous, possible windfall, source of information. That should have been extensively investigated, you know, with the whole interaction, you know, how did how did he come to be there? And then her contacting the mother and then looking to give the car back, that that just doesn't doesn't ring true because why why would you allow that, you know, core core transaction to occur? And then all the sudden want to back off of it, you know, so I mean, that's that's a huge red flag that that's something bad happened to him, you know, after that picture was taken. Police instead go to the beach nearby and speak with people about whether they had seen land in. They just went down and walked around and, you know, said, oh, well, you know, we can't find him. So, you know, he's an adult, he's 42, he just went off on his own. A brief canine search also comes up empty. There's something going on here on the big island. There are too many missing people that just disappear into thin air. And the majority of the disappearances of people from the big island over the past five years are people who look like land in Fairbanks, white men. Out of the 93 cases we tracked more than half of them, 42 are white males. And Pucci says there's something else. There seems to be at least one or two women involved in the direct custody of all these vehicles, you know, seems to be a pattern in and of itself. If I was in the Hawaii police department, I might look at a pattern that might be there, quote unquote, living off the grid and off the land. But that's not quite enough and they might need vehicles to borrow. And If the person is attached to it, then that's just collateral damage. While the Hawaii Police Department has been trying to find the nearly 100 people who have disappeared over the past five years, the department has also been dealing with its own issues. Public records show that since 2021, at least a dozen officers from the department have been discharged accused of assault, drunk driving, burglary, harassment, robbery, sexual assault, criminal trespass, tampering with evidence, and falsifying records. Those cases have been turned over to prosecutors. Dozens of other officers have been suspended from misconduct, like not activating their body-worn cameras, disposing of evidence, and use of excessive force. On top of that, the department is also short 75 officers, and with an island that's 4,000 square miles, large enough that all the other Hawaiian islands could fit inside it nearly twice. Having enough manpower is critical, especially when trying to find people who have disappeared into thin air. Around here, the police have way too much to do for the amount of police officers that are out there. There needs to be a task force specifically put together for the missing people that are out there with multiple agencies that can dig deep, that have people that can actually look at these websites and do what we do on a daily basis. There has to be more to this story than has been previously investigated or known. As of 2026, the department is now actively increasing its recruitment efforts, improving its community outreach work, and supporting higher education for its officers. Families of the missing hope the department will also reopen their loved ones' cases. The family of 29-year-old Shanice Ogata Stodinger are some of those still holding out hope. Before she went missing, Shanice, a mother of two young girls, was using drugs and had fallen in with the wrong crowd. Three days before her disappearance, a man and a woman attacked Shanice. They mobbed her, tried to strangles Shanice. He had a rope around her neck. While he was choking her, his girlfriend came from the side and hit Shanice on her ear, with a, on her head, with a, with a big vase or some sort. But the Shanice was there to break free. It cost her a call. Police arrest Shanice and charge her with assault. Three days later after that, Shanice disappears. July 9, 2023, Shanice goes Opiehi picking with her cousin. Opiehi are Hawaiian oysters. They're a delicacy. Picking Opiehi is dangerous. People can get swept into the ocean. But Shanice's family isn't convinced that's what happened to her. She said, she was after the vehicle fixing her, her Opiehi bag. And he went to the right of the vehicle, which she wanted to go to the left. And he told her not to go that way, slapstick together. And then she'd like, oh no, I'm going to go that way so we can get more in a sharp period of time. So he went out. She was still at the car. And then when he came back, she wasn't there. She didn't return. So he ended up going the opposite way, looking for her down the hook, Kosoa, and then couldn't find her. The family calls 911 and heads to the beach to look for her. But they don't find her. Next morning, the police sent dogs were there. They had articles of Shanice's belongings from my house, and they used that to bring dogs to use. The family says the dogs picked up Shanice's scent in the parking lot. That's where the dog picked her up. Only went from up down to the car. So. But never made you the coach. And never made it to the coach sign. Shanice's family says the police told them Shanice's case is also suspended. It's a heartbreaking reality for Shanice's family and her two children. On her 5th birthday, Shanice's daughter wished for only one thing. The blanket candles. What's your wish for? I wish for money to come back. Oh, yes. All I want as of right now is for my two nieces, have their mom back. But I feel so bad for them because every day, the little one always asks, ask Jesus to bring mommy back. Heather and Brett Eckley also pray every day that their son Tyler Rikovsky Eckley is found. I guess what keeps me going is just the hope that we can find him and bring him home. Tyler moved to the big island from Minnesota in 2023. He was always that kid that was going to get out of here and go somewhere where he could walk in the sand. He just loved the ocean and loved everything about it. He was last seen Friday, August 9th, 2024 in Pahoa. I last spoke to Tyler on the Tuesday before he went missing. He wasn't doing great mentally. Like I didn't think he was going to take his own life or anything, but he was struggling to stay sober. I know he made it to his N.A. meeting that night in Pahoa and then someone had seen him on Friday. It was that Sunday, the 11th, when I got a call from Pahoa Police Department saying that someone turned in his belongings. The person said they found Tyler's belongings on some rocks by the water. I ended up putting a post on Facebook and I was looking for any Hawaiian site, you know, big island site to put out to be aware. I thought it was dog. Oh, he was probably with him and if that was the case, then I knew he was okay, I guess. But then I found on one of the sites where someone had found his dog and had taken her in home with them because she was just running loose in the area that he went missing. And that's when I really started to get discouraged and, you know, something is really wrong. Putting conversations with some of his friends and stuff, they're like, he said, I'm so glad I have Ohia. I will never, you know, I'll never leave her. Heather files a missing persons report. They went and talked to people at like the retreat center at the Kalani retreat center across the road from where he went missing. I don't, you know, they said that someone saw him Friday morning on the cliffs, kind of down on the rocks. And then he wasn't stable at that point. I know one of the people who worked there, a woman had given him a water and like a granola bar or something, he said he was trying to sober up. It was frustrating that no one was ever able to get the camera footage from the retreat center. By the time the police went down, they said it had been written over already. So, so that's where that kind of ended and that was really what we needed. When we got Tyler's belongings back to us, out of evidence, there was some threatening messages and voicemails on his phone, threatening him because he owed him money four or five months before this happened, some drug dealers were after him. We did everything possible. At that time, hung flyers talked to anybody that was down there, down in that area. We had a man that helped us with his drone, he flew it along the coastline, didn't find anything. I feel like I'm letting him down because we haven't found him. Holao Leslie Yap knows exactly how she feels. There's so much about, or that I want people to remember, I mean, sorry. Her brother Earl Ola Hyde, a fisherman, disappeared in April 2025. He was last seen on his boat. You know, he enjoys the ocean, he's been fishing his whole life. We come from a fishing family, or learned how to surf before he learned how to swim. And I have the utmost faith that if he was on the ocean, he's that awesome of a fisherman that he would have been fine, regardless of the conditions. To his family's knowledge. He never went out in the middle of the night, but the last person to see him. His deckhand says that's what he did on April 7th. He went out on the water at 2.30 in the morning and never came back to shore. Apparently his deckhand slept in his truck, my brother in his own truck. Deckhand heard my brother trying to leave at, you know, 2.30 in the morning, and supposedly per him, he helped him launch his boat. There was such an extensive search as far as from, you know, the Hawaii County Five Department, you know, the Coast Guard for five days and after that, you know, our family set up a GoFundMe which we actually ended up, you know, hiring people with planes and air, long liners. If he was on the ocean, how could they not find him? They searched high and low and nothing, no boat, no debris, no awe. How do you deal with all this now by writing songs for him? And, you know, playing them on social media, it keeps me going, it keeps me hopeful, it keeps me feeling that I'm trying to keep him, his name alive as long as possible. That's why I'm here. It's just to keep the awareness of my having still been missing, and also for other people who are missing here in the beginning. I'd walk away, a house I'd stand in, I'd love unbroken, until the larry end, though I come home, across the deep blue sea, we are waiting for you, forever and always are coming home, the ocean, the land, the sky, they know the truth, and we'll carry you back to us, forever, come home, so let me gather again, forever and ever.