Listening to Jimmy Ulualoha “Ulu Boy” Napeahi from his Hilo hospital bed, where he was recovering from 30 wounds from 13 shark bites with more than 180 stitches holding him together, it’s easy to forget he’s a teen.
The 16-year-old Kalapana boy stays calm and speaks in a low, steady voice to deliver the details of his life-altering and nearly life-ending experience, careful never to sensationalize the day his life flashed before his eyes. His insight seems to come from someone much older.
During his hospital stay, Ulu reflected on how the shark attack has helped him, not as a surfer, but “in the way I look at things, and the way I look at life,” he said. “I’m so thankful to be alive. That’s a gift of its own. It’ll be a new beginning.”
His mother, Claire, attributes his attitude to his great-grandmother, who passed on her Hawaiian values to him and his siblings.
“He has an old soul,” his mother said. “Just the kind of patience and nurturing and understanding, it all comes from her. It’s just in him to always listen and do the right thing and become somebody, never breaking the rules.”
The semipro surfer was released from the Hilo Medical Center on Thursday, 11 days after the Aug. 18 attack by a 10-foot tiger shark at a Puna surf spot known as “Dead Trees.”
The shark went for his legs, leaving deep cuts and punctures on his hips, buttocks, foot, calves and thighs.
The teen is recovering at his grandmother’s Hilo house near the hospital, instead of his Kalapana home, where there is no running water or electricity.
“Feels wonderful,” he said Friday by telephone. “It’s really great to be out of the hospital. … There’s still a gaping hole in my leg so stuff from the infection can drain out.”
Ulu developed an infection in a deep wound, which had to be cut and the fluid drained, and was placed on antibiotics.
He is walking slowly and without crutches for short distances.
The 6-foot, 210-pound, still-growing teenager said his mom’s cooking — fish, chicken, poi, salads and kulolo (a mashed taro dessert) — have all helped him heal.
On the day of the attack, a Sunday, Ulu recalled, his mom called out to him to take just one more wave and get in because he had a plane to catch. He was due to compete in a junior pro surfing event in Waikiki.
It was one wave too many.
Claire Napeahi said her son Kiko, 20, yelled, “Shark!”
Everyone started padding in except Ulu, who didn’t hear the warning.
The next thing his mother saw was a surfer named Dallas O’Shaughnessy coming in with Ulu in the shorebreak. Ulu was lying on his board, but couldn’t get up.
Ulu later recalled that the shark hit the bottom of his board, knocking him off.
“The shark swam around me super fast, like the flash of an eye,” he said. “It bit me and bit me and bit me and pulled me under.”
He tried to fight back, punching it.
He recognized it as a tiger shark “by its distinct markings on the back part,” he said.
The shark acted “like it was hungry, like it was ready to kill,” he recalled. “It was kind of creepy. Usually they take a bite and let go.”
He blacked out and when he came to he was surrounded by blood.
That’s when his will to survive kicked in. He called out to O’Shaughnessy, a former lifeguard, who “punched me to get me out of shock mode,” he said, and they paddled in.
Family members, friends and lifeguard Nohea Masaoka rushed in to assist. O’Shaughnessy used his board’s leash as a tourniquet, wrapping Napeahi’s thighs near his groin.
Once at the hospital, Claire Napeahi never went home. Along with her daughters, Tristi, 24, and Manu, 18, she cared for Ulu there, bathing him and changing his bedding. Ulu’s best friend, Kapono Crivello, and girlfriend, Malia Auld, also stayed by his bedside for long hours.
Fortunately, none of Ulu’s ligaments was severed.
“I was really lucky the shark missed my arteries,” he said. “It just tore up my muscle down to my bone and the doctor put everything back together.”
He said Friday it probably will take maybe another month to heal, two months of physical therapy, and “after that, it’s all up to me.”
He added: “I feel good. … In time, I will be stronger than I ever was if I keep positive.”
The experience still seems surreal. He even laughed about it Friday.
“To me, I can’t believe I was bit by a shark,” he said. “I looked at the ocean the other day, and I didn’t feel no fear, just calm. From here on out, there’s nothing but good and I’m just getting ready to get into shape again.”
In the hospital, Ulu heard the news of the death of a 20-year-old German tourist who lost her arm in a shark attack at Palauea Beach on Maui. That attack was four days before his.
“That was really heavy,” he said. “Life is a blessing. You won’t know life is a blessing until it’s almost taken.”
His mother said that when the woman died,
“I wanted to lose it.”
At the time, she was afraid for her son’s life because he was having a bad reaction to the intravenous drugs.
“So I was scared, but he pulled through that,” she said. “It’s been a roller-coaster ride.”
Claire Napeahi said she is grateful to her son’s surgeon, Dr. Joshua Pierce, and the hospital staff who helped him survive. She is also grateful to the well-wishers from near and far who sent or delivered get-well cards and brought goodies, and the many visits from friends and relatives and youngsters who’ve surfed with him and who look up to him.
Keith Nehls, who runs a youth program called Basic Image, has mentored Ulu since age 6.
“He’s a good kid,” he said. “He’s going to help a lot of other kids and even adults. He’s special and we want to help him achieve his goals.”
Nehls added, “He’s a good listener, absorbs what he hears, and has been well spoken since he was little.”
Ulu has become a youth leader with Basic Image, which promotes good values through community service projects.
“He’s become a good mentor for other kids,” Nehls said. “A lot of kids look up to him.”
When little kids went to visit, they would say, “Ulu, the shark is a beast, but you’re the king,” Nehls said.
And, Nehls said, Ulu would tell them, “‘You guys all surf. Don’t be afraid. I want you guys to go out there. I’m not afraid. I’m going back out there.’ He tells them, ‘Don’t give up. Just keep on doing it.’”
Eventually, he will return to his family’s property in Kalapana, where they live they live off the land, with a generator for power and an outhouse.
In the longer term, friends and family members say, the future looks bright for Ulu, an exceptional student at the Hawaii Academy of Arts and Science, a K-12 charter school in Pahoa. Ulu, who turns 17 on Nov. 2, will graduate in May, having already taken calculus and physics as a junior.
He said he’s already earned “a good amount of money for surfing,” adding, “It’s my future. It’s my dream. I got to get back.”
And as fearsome as the attack was, he vows not to let it dull his competitive edge.
“It’s hard to be friends with my nightmare,” he said. “But it’s what I want to do and it’s where I want to be … continuing my career as a professional surfer.”
