Surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, it is hard for anyone growing up in Hawaii not to feel a connection to the water. It is a source of healing, of recreation and of sustenance.

It also is part of her Hawaiian culture, Sarah ‘Alohilani Jenkins said, to be a caretaker of the ocean and what it provides. It is her kuleana (responsibility) to bring awareness to the ecological and socio-economic impacts of the red mangrove on the shoreline and reefs surrounding her home island of Molokai.

That passion resulted in her and younger sister Lily Nalulani Jenkins taking first place in the Earth & Environmental Sciences division at May’s International Science and Engineering Fair in Pennsylvania for their presentation of “March of the Molokai Mangrove.”

On Monday, that passion was further rewarded when Jenkins was named the Ambassador of Aloha at the annual Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation mahalo luncheon at Outrigger Canoe Club.

The honor is the most prestigious of the scholarships given out by ODKF to Hawaii student-athletes in that it recognizes the individual who best represents the creed of aloha embodied by Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii’s first Olympian and acknowledged father of modern surfing.

“I am so humbled to be standing in his shadow,” said Jenkins, one of four valedictorians at Molokai High’s graduation ceremony last month. “He’s long had an impact on my family’s life, and now he has made such an impact on my life today.”

Jenkins, captain of the Molokai High swim team, said that her great-grandmother met Kahanamoku in Huntington Beach, Calif., in the 1930s and remained friends with him and his wife, Nadine, when they moved to Hawaii.

“Here was this haole Irish girl who didn’t know how to swim and Duke told her ‘Come, we’ll teach you to swim, we’ll teach you to surf,’” Jenkins said. “She said she preferred to watch, but she encouraged my grandfather and my father to pursue that passion for the water. My grandfather was a great waterman and my dad a very good surfer.

“It’s all come full circle. This hapa-haole Irish girl knows how to surf and to swim. It’s amazing.”

The ambassador award comes with an additional $10,000, which, Jenkins said, will help her pursue her goal of a degree in environmental engineering at — appropriately enough — Duke University in North Carolina.

“It’s a beautiful campus, very green, almost like a mainland version of Hawaii,” said Jenkins, who was also accepted at Harvard and Brown. “It’s going to be on the other side of the United States, but I felt like it was such a community.

“Growing up on Molokai showed me how important community is. It has made me who I am, and I want to perpetuate the Hawaiian culture in my new community and continue to give back.”

On Monday, ODKF awarded $165,000 in 44 individual scholarships, seven individual athletic grants, seven grants to teams and organizations, and 15 grants to help fund events that were part of Kahanamoku’s athletic legacy: swimming, paddling, paddleboarding, water polo and volleyball. The foundation also announced a special fundraising campaign to celebrate Kahanamoku’s 125th birthday called Duke 125.