Mel Kinney, whose boyish face was part of the opening credits of the original “Hawaii Five-0,” died Tuesday after suffering a heart attack several days earlier. He was 57.

An avid big-wave surfer and member of the original Hokule‘a crew, Kinney was a set dresser in recent years, working on the ABC TV shows “Lost,” “Off the Map” and “The River” as well as the motion picture “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” said his sister, Leimana Damate.

Kinney had just come ashore at Sunset Beach after a surf session Feb. 1 when he was stricken, she said.

“He had an undiagnosed heart problem,” she said. “He was in perfect health. He came in and took a shower and sat down to talk with a friend and had a major cardiac arrest. His last memory was of Sunset.”

Kinney was born in Waimea on Hawaii island but grew up in Waikiki. He was 13 when someone with a movie camera stopped the lad on his way to surf in Waikiki in 1968. The cameraman gave him $5 to film him, and Kinney didn’t know what it was for until he saw the series premiere of “Five-0,” Damate said.

If you blinked you could have missed him, but strangers continued to recognize Kinney, even decades later, as the boy from the original “Five-0.”

“His looks never really changed,” Damate said. “He would just laugh. He was very humble.”

Kinney’s proudest achievement was aboard the Hokule‘a in 1976, when the traditional voyaging canoe sailed from Tahiti to Hawaii for the first time.

“It meant everything to him,” his sister said. “It was the most significant thing in his life. He rarely talked about it outside but with us he was very, very proud to have participated in such a historic moment.”

Services are pending.