Jonathan Perreira has lived too many years, made too much money off his own wits, suffered too many slick-talking, Reyn’s-wearing ninnies to be anything but absolutely direct about the things he cares about most.
So here’s the deal: Perreira, 90, has a valuable Hawaiian heirloom that he wants desperately to give to a deserving charitable organization. Problem is that despite a steady stream of smiling, gladhanding functionaries wearing down his carpet, he can’t seem to get what he considers a fair appraisal of his treasure nor, it seems, an honest accounting of anyone’s intentions.
"I want to give this to charity to benefit people who are most in need, but these damn pilaus are kicking me in the face," he says. "This is a damn dirty town, and these bastards don’t care enough about the people in the street."
For all of his vinegar, Perreira is no cartoon curmudgeon. Clear-eyed and driven as that day in 1938 when he left rural Puna for a few years of schooling at the University of Hawaii and an eventual stint in the Army, Perreira has leveraged the considerable fortune he’s made in real estate to benefit a host of causes close to his heart.
He and his wife donated the recently unveiled statues of St. Damien at Damien Memorial School and Mother Marianne Cope at St. Francis School. When Damien was canonized in 2009, Perreira kicked in $50,000 to help residents of Kalaupapa attend the ceremony in Rome.
Never one for the grip-and-grin photo, Perreira typically keeps his gifts between himself and the charity. No news conferences, no oversize checks, no press releases — just like when Perreira and his wife recently quietly cut a stack of $5,000 checks to programs that feed the homeless.
But Perreira is turning up the volume on his latest situation in hopes of resolving what he says has become an intolerable situation.
Perreira, an avid collector of Hawaiian antiquities, has a 10.5-foot mirror originally owned by Princess Ruth Keelikolani and later bequeathed, as part of the Keoua Hale estate, to Bernice Pauahi Bishop. The mirror later passed from Claus Spreckels to the Castle family and finally to Perreira.
While none of the many antique dealers and appraisers who have seen the mirror have questioned its authenticity, Perreira says no one has given him a straight or honest answer about its worth.
Perreira has approached museums, churches, even major trusts trying to find a home for the historic treasure. The response, he says, has been puzzling, leading him to think that people might want it for reasons other than to leverage its worth to help others.
"People might not believe me because I’m an old bastard and I speak classic pidgin, but I know what I’m talking about," Perreira says. "Human beings eating from garbage cans is a damn disgrace. People out there need help, and I want this mirror to be used to help them. I don’t want it to be snuck out the back door to some CEO’s private home."
Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.
