Think you have a lot on your proverbial plate? Meet Donna Sepulveda.

The 48-year-old Kona resident didn’t get to bed until nearly daybreak on Saturday (long shift at the airport) and woke up three hours later to take care of her stepfather (who has brain cancer) and her 8-year-old granddaughter (who has lived with her since birth), before heading out to a cleaning job (she owns her own maid service) and later another eight-hour-plus shift shuttling tourists around for Budget and Avis.

Sunday? Pretty much the same thing.

"Some people have a full plate," Sepulveda says, cheerfully. "I guess I may have a few plates."

But, Sepulveda insists, everything she does has a purpose, and those purposes usually have something to do with taking care of others.

Indeed, a few stolen moments in the garden or at the beach notwithstanding, Sepulveda has little time for anything else. As the tattoo on her arm declares, "If it’s not beneficial, it’s artificial."

Sepulveda grew up in Kalihi, the fifth of six children raised by a single mother. What the family lacked in financial resources, it tried to make up for in fierce loyalty and family unity. Those riches multiplied when Sepulveda’s mother married and brought the family to the Big Island to become part of her new husband’s large extended family.

"It was awesome," Sepulveda recalls. "My stepdad had 14 brothers and sisters, so there were all of their kids and grandkids around to play with."

The family spent weekends camping at the beach, Sepulveda and her siblings learning to throw nets in the waters fronting her uncle’s home along Alii Drive.

Sepulveda returned to Oahu for a year to live with her older sister and earn her diploma from Mililani High School in 1981. She returned to Kona with a husband and the first of their three children on the way.

A few years later, Sepulveda attended her paternal grandmother’s funeral. As she scanned the faces of the dozens of unknown people in her section, she recognized something of a family resemblance.

"I finally asked my uncle who all these people were, and he said, ‘They’re your siblings!’"

Her father, Sepulveda learned, had sired some 47 children with three wives and several other women, including Sepulveda’s mother.

"I was upset at first because I thought about what all of these siblings and all of their mothers must have gone through," she says. "But I’m glad that I have them."

Still, the revelation did little to shake her belief in the redemptive power of family.

Sepulveda and her youngest son take care of her stepfather with the same love and compassion Sepulveda shared with her mother in the last 19 difficult years of her life. And Sepulveda continues to kneel in prayer each morning asking for the strength and focus to continue working those two jobs, seven days a week, to provide for her loved ones.

"I have a good and loving family," she says. "What more could I ask for?"

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Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.