The insistence of a precocious 8-year-old McCully girl, known for helping others, helped find an 83-year-old Moiliili woman with Alzheimer’s disease who had been missing for four days.
While in line at the Ala Moana Center Subway restaurant Friday night, Tiki Willis and her mother, Dina, saw Helen Romero, who had wandered away from Palama Health Center the morning of May 7.
"This cute little lady came in with $20," said Tiki, a second-grader at Waikiki Elementary School. "My mom said, ‘Put away your money,’" and bought her a sandwich.
Dina Willis thought the woman looked familiar, pulled out her cellphone and checked Facebook, where a friend had posted the photo of the missing woman.
"My mom was looking on Facebook," she said. "All of a sudden, we saw the photo of this lady. We said, ‘That’s the same lady.’"
Dina Willis wasn’t sure that this gray-haired woman was the same one in the CrimeStoppers photo her friend had posted, but her daughter’s insistence made her take another look.
"I was going to let it go, and she said, ‘Please call the cops. Please call the cops.’"
Tiki Willis was sure.
"I could just see that it’s her," the girl said.
When the 4-foot-11 Romero displayed symptoms of Alzheimer’s, that helped clinch it for Dina Willis.
"She put the sandwich in her bag," Tiki Willis said.
Then she bought soup.
"My mom said she probably forgot," Tiki said.
"Then she (goes to another restaurant and) buys spaghetti and a hot dog," Dina Willis added.
Willis said of her daughter, "She really convinced me."
She added that other people were "driving by giving her money … people walking by giving her money," outside Thom’s Barber Shop.
"She was so cheerful," Tiki Willis said. "She had no money. People felt sorry for her, probably."
It was young Tiki’s empathy, though, that motivated her.
"I thought her family probably was saying, ‘Where’s Grandma? Where’s Mom?’" the girl said. "What if that was my mom?"
Her mom finally called the police.
When Tiki Willis isn’t saving little old ladies, she’s winning surf and stand-up paddleboard contests, including first place in her age group at the 2011 Battle of the Paddle in Dana Point, Calif.
Tiki, who surfs in Waikiki with mom and dad, often encounters other people in need of rescue.
Dad Alika Willis said, "A friend of ours bought her a first-aid kit because she’s always helping people."
Tiki recalls encountering "a woman who cut her leg and was bleeding really bad," and running to the lifeguard for help.
Her mother said that when she was just 5 years old, during a stand-up paddleboard contest, a competitor — another little girl — lost her paddle.
"She stopped competing and got her paddle and gave it to her," Dina Willis said.
Romero was returned to her care home Friday, according to a CrimeStoppers news release Monday. Calls to CrimeStoppers Coordinator Kim Buffett were not returned.
