Kauai native returns to an island in need

The Kauai that Jacy Youn remembers is not the Kauai to which she returned.

It’s a common feeling for those who grew up in a small town, made their mark in the city and then went back to give back.

For Youn, Kauai is no longer a place where you can confidently call over the fence to ask any neighbor if you can pick lychee. Now it’s more common to buy lychee at a pricey farmers market.

“The social fabric has changed. We no longer have that tight-knit community,” Youn said.

Something about the parking lot of the Lihue Walmart serves as a metaphor for the community’s troubles. “It drives me nuts,” Youn said. “The shopping carts are all over the place. People take the carts out of the store, take their stuff to the car and just leave the carts wherever.”

The chaos in the parking lot is symbolic of a lack of responsibility, of caring for the next person, of respect for order.

Youn graduated from Kapaa High in ’92 and went on to get her bachelor’s degree at the University of Northern Colorado. She was a writer and managing editor at Hawaii Business magazine for seven years before going to law school at UH-Manoa. Most recently she was corporate communications manager of Central Pacific Bank.

Two months ago she started as Kauai Area executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of Hawaii. The position had been unfilled for more than a year while the staff kept the programs going for more than 1,000 kids on the island. “It’s a workplace where every single person there is motivated by passion,” she said.

For her this new job, so different from corporate work, is a return to the reason she went to law school: to fight on the side of good.

What she found when she returned to the new Kauai — where the ultrarich live behind gates and the homeless population is so pervasive that there’s a permanent encampment at the County Building — was that many families in the middle have to work incredibly hard to afford to live on the island. “There’s so much need and the community is so giving, but … there is so much need,” Youn said.

The Boys and Girls Club serves kids ages 7-17 in three clubhouses on the island. It’s a diverse group that comes for activities like hip-hop dancing, football and cooking class. Some of the kids, though, just have nowhere else to go. For some, drugs have taken over their families, and they are strewn about like forgotten shopping carts.

“You can either try do something about the drugs or get to the kids before they get to drugs,” Youn said.

When she talks about her vision for the organization, she goes back to that metaphor of the Walmart parking lot. “My goal is, in 10 years from now, those carts will all be in place. Our mission is to help build kids into caring, responsible citizens.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.