Nothing can hold you back! Yet allergies keep Hee free

The message we send to young people is that their health challenges need not limit them.

Kids who are allergic to bee stings can still go to summer camp.

Kids who have diabetes can still participate in rigorous high school sports.

Gosh, the latest is that kids with uku don’t have to stay home from school.

Just as long as you’re not actively bleeding or in some state of critical distress, society encourages you to put on a Band-Aid and a good attitude and go do your thing.

That goes for adults as well. There’s a television commercial that depicts a patient riding his bike to his regular cancer treatment. Ads for pharmaceuticals that treat conditions like osteoarthritis, bladder leakage and chronic constipation show smiling silver-haired hotties swing-dancing under starry strings of lights.

But Al Hee can’t serve his prison time because he has food allergies?

Oh, come on.

A year ago Hee was found guilty of filing false income tax returns for the years 2007-2012, having his telecommunications company pay millions of dollars of his family’s expenses and not claiming that as income. He was also convicted for impeding the IRS investigation.

Hee’s defense was that he didn’t know that was a problem and the IRS never told him.

His sentencing, which came six months after the verdict, was 46 months in prison plus a $10,000 fine and an order to pay $431,793 in back taxes.

Since then Hee has made various attempts to delay his prison time. The food allergy business and the complaint that he can’t have an EpiPen in prison were the latest.

Hee’s case looms large for several reasons. He was a friend to the old-guard Democrats, and among the 200 pages of letters in support of his character are signatures of friends in high places. But also, the audacity of his actions raises what he did to punchline levels. Hee once told a reporter that his salary at Waimana Enterprises was a dollar a year. That was back in 2001. By 2007 he was paying for his three kids’ college tuition, buying jewelry for his wife, putting relatives on the payroll and getting massages twice a week charged to his company, which was kept afloat only through federal subsidies. Yes, he managed to get cellphone and internet service to off-the-grid Hawaiian homelands, but he used millions of federal dollars meant for that service to serve himself.

Hee is supposed to report to the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minn., by today. We’ll see whether that actually happens. It should. The prison is a 12-minute drive away from the Mayo Clinic, according to Google Maps, and the facilities have a working relationship. The Rochester prison is where televangelist Jim Bakker served his time. Also, Al Taubman, former head of Sotheby’s auction house, was in prison there for fixing art prices. Taubman’s cellmates were, according to the New York Post, a pilot and a dentist.

Sounds deluxe.

Grab some Claritin, avoid the shrimp scampi and get going.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@taradvertiser.com.