Whenever word spread about a lost hiker on Oahu trails, Mabel Kekina was there.

Kekina was in charge of the Hawaiian Trail & Mountain Club’s trail-clearing crew. She knew local pathways like the back of her hand, including every tree, rock and root, and made searching for lost hikers her mission.

The low-key Kekina, who died Jan. 4 at age 83, had specific instructions about her death. She did not want an obituary printed in the newspaper or a sad funeral ceremony, nor did she want any special plaques or a bench installed in her memory. She simply wanted her ashes scattered on some of her favorite trails.

Club members, who knew her as the "trail maintenance mom" or just "Ma," are holding a special memorial in celebration of Kekina’s life at the clubhouse on Saturday. The documentary "Heroes," featuring Kekina, will be shown, and nature photographer Nathan Yuen will present a slide show on her legacy to the club and community at large.

"Mabel was an unlikely hero," said Yuen, a club member. "Who would think that a white-haired, old woman in her 70s would be involved in finding lost and missing hikers in the mountains?"

Standing about 4 feet 11 inches tall, Kekina could out-hike people half her age.

The reason she became involved was her empathy for the families of missing hikers, Yuen said. If police and fire departments ended their search after three days, families often had nowhere else to turn.

Kekina and her trail-clearing crew knew the trails and mountains well, so she believed it was her obligation to help, he said.

She would coordinate searches, recruiting club members while corresponding with the missing hiker’s family and authorities. From 1990 to 2010 she was actively involved in searches for more than a dozen hikers.

In 1999 those efforts include the successful rescue of Anitta Winther and Marianne Konnerup of the Netherlands, who were missing for eight days in Kahana Valley.

Club members who were clearing the trail climbed Ohulehule summit at Kahana and found the two 20-year-old women.

Other searches did not have as happy an ending. Some hikers were never found, and in other cases rescue came too late.

Kekina always believed it was worth the effort, even if it meant going back through areas that had already been searched.

In 2003 artist Albert Lowe fell about 250 feet from the Kamaileunu ridge trail in Waianae at an elevation of about 3,000 feet during a hike with the club. He broke several ribs, vertebrae and an arm, and spent the night unconscious on the ridge.

When he regained consciousness, he answered his cellphone, and the voice he heard was Kekina’s. While talking to Lowe on the phone, she helped guide a helicopter to the injured man.

In March 2010, Kekina helped locate Enricky Kennedy, who had broken his leg on a trail near Waimalu ditch while hiking with his dog. Kennedy spent the night on the trail and was found the next morning by pig hunters.

Fortunately, he had a blanket, plenty of water and food, and used survival skills learned from his days in the military, splinting his own leg using guava tree branches.

Kennedy’s wife was frantic during the whole ordeal, Kennedy said, and it was Kekina who calmed her, coordinated the search and figured out which trail he was on.

"Nobody knew the trails like she did," Kennedy said. "No one else had such a thorough grasp of the trails and every characteristic of every trail. She would know there was a giant mango tree right there."

More important, Kennedy said, it was Kekina’s compassion while dealing with the families of lost hikers that made her special.

As the emergency crew was loading him into an ambulance, Kekina was by his side, saying, "I knew you were going to be fine."

MABEL Michie Takeuchi Kekina was born March 21, 1928 in Honolulu.

"She grew up as a local girl in Moiliili, sort of a tomboy," said her daughter, Maile Brown. "She hung out with the boys, and she was always swimming in the rivers and ponds. She was always full of adventure."

She went to Washington Intermediate and McKinley High schools and was just 16 years old when she married Moses Kamai Kekina in October 1944. She was a working mother with a career at Bank of Hawaii that spanned 37 years.

It wasn’t until she was in her 50s, after her four children were grown, Brown said, that she discovered hiking, trading in her high heels for sturdy boots, her dresses for clothes more suitable for the trail, and her classic Camaro for a pickup truck.

She started hiking with the Hawaiian Trail & Mountain Club in 1981 and two years later mobilized a crew dedicated to clearing trails.

"She did her mommy part and career part, so it was time for her to do something for herself," Brown said. "When she went hiking, she thoroughly enjoyed it. It was her passion."

Brown said her mother also loved to travel, visiting Canada, Europe, Asia, New Zealand and Australia.

Kekina had a gift for finding lost hikers, she said, and kept an account of every one of them.

"She had that unique gift of piecing together stories from the family," she said. "That’s why she thought she could help."

THE TRAILS were like a second home to Kekina, and the clearing crew, a second family.

As a trail boss she had "moxie," club member and friend Carole Moon said.

"She was clever and had the ‘cajones’ to solve difficult and personally threatening situations that we trail clearers were faced with on many different occasions," she said. "She was never confrontational."

Under her leadership the crew grew from a few to 25 to 35 members who regularly participated in the back-breaking work on Sundays. Afterward they celebrated with a potluck.

As trail boss, Kekina led by example, teaching crew members, for example, not to cut down native plants. She also fed them well and became known for her delicious baked goods; her specialty was lilikoi chiffon cake.

Many historical trails outside the jurisdiction of the state would be gone if it were not for the hard work of the trail clearers, Aaron Lowe, Oahu trails and access specialist with the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife, said.

"With the help of (the club) and particularly Mabel, those trails won’t necessarily be lost forever," he said. "I considered her the trail tutu."

Kekina loved to swim as much as she loved to hike. She knew every tide pool, river and waterfall along trails and was often the first one to jump in and the last one out, club members said.

"She was a person who was loved, even revered, and we will not soon see her like again," said club president Jay Feldman. "She was quite simply a legend, and you were truly blessed if you had met her and twice truly blessed if you spent time with her clearing trail."

Besides her daughter, Kekina is survived by five siblings, three sons, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.