It was Fate that brought Faith Tomoyasu to Point Panic on a hot, muggy day in August. Almost 40 years earlier the sometimes treacherous Kakaako surf break had been the scene of one of the greatest tragedies in Hawaii song-parody history.

While it wasn’t quite “90 feet and glassy,” the steep 3- to 4-foot waves crashing just scant yards from the rocky breakwater where Tomoyasu stood provided an apt backdrop to reveal her role in a beloved pidgin ballad sung by a doomed bodysurfer who knew “my eggs was headed for that big omelet in the sky.”

Her confession: Faith was Fate. Fate Yanagi, head cheerleader at Furtado Memorial High School and namesake of isle comedian James Kawika “Rap” Reiplinger’s send-up of Ray Peterson’s 1960 hit “Tell Laura I Love Her.”

“When I heard it on the radio, I wen’ gasp,” said Tomoyasu, who was Faith Tachino back then. “I didn’t tell my brothers or sisters, I was so embarrassed. Oh my god.”

Tomoyasu, now 63, had no inkling that “Fate Yanagi” would become a throwback classic for her generation, one that newer fans who discover Reiplinger via YouTube clips find just as hilarious as listeners did back in the day.

When telling the story of how Faith became Fate, the retired public school teacher with a sassy sense of humor slipped easily in and out of the pidgin of her Aiea childhood, when she first became acquainted with Reiplinger. She said she kept quiet about her connection to the song until she replied to recent Facebook posts by Honolulu Star-Advertiser entertainment columnist Wayne Harada and singer Audy Kimura reporting that Reiplinger’s widow, former KITV reporter Leesa Clark Stone, was looking to interview people who knew her husband, who died of a cocaine overdose in 1984 at age 33.

Stone, who is writing a biography on Reiplinger, said he never mentioned Tomoyasu, but after talking to the Pearl City woman, she found her “very believable.”

Tomoyasu’s father, James Tachino, was a friend of Reiplinger’s dad, and the two families often socialized. Tachino was an accomplished magician, and whenever he performed at gatherings, Reiplinger, who was 8 or 9 years old at the time, would eagerly volunteer to be his assistant, according to Tomoyasu.

“He just loved my dad. He would follow him around like a little dog,” she said. “He wanted to know how the trick was done. He was very precocious — a pain in the rear.” She said Reiplinger became known as “the ‘urusai’ one” — Japanese for pesky or annoying.

The boy also took pleasure in teasing the younger Tomoyasu. “He would run around and bug the hell out of me,” she said. “He would call me ‘Fate’ and other words that began with ‘F.’ I used to say, ‘My name’s not Fate, it’s Faith!

“He always did love to say that name. Even when we were playing he made up little ditties. He was always trying to do those kinds of parodies, even when he was 8 or 9. I thought he was pretty brilliant as a comedian … . Certain names and personalities stuck with him. Auntie Marialani (“Not too sweet, not too rancid, jus’ right”) — he knew somebody like that.”

The two fell out of touch, as Tomoyasu attended Aiea High School and Reiplinger went to Punahou School. (“I think the father thought if they put him in that school, he would be OK. Didn’t work,” she deadpanned.)

In 1974 Reiplinger joined with Edward Ka‘ahea and the late James Grant Benton to form the groundbreaking comedy troupe Booga Booga, known for its pidgin humor and exaggerated character skits. Tomoyasu, by then a University of Hawaii student, recalls going to Territorial Tavern at Bishop Street and Nimitz Highway to see the trio. One night she introduced herself to Reiplinger and reminded him that he used to torment her about her name.

“He said he just liked to get a reaction from me,” she said.

Tomoyasu said she frequented his shows — and was an entertainer herself, singing pop and rock music covers in “hot pants, Cher hair and fake eyelashes” at the Beef ‘n’ Grog in Waikiki and other bars — but they moved in different circles.

Then somewhat out of the blue, she got a call in the middle of the night at her parents’ house. It was Reiplinger.

“I asked him how he got my number, and he said he found my dad’s name in the phone book. It was 1 in the morning, and he sounded like he was high, and he starts singing this song to me. Okaaay.”

The girl in the original version of the song was named Fate Tachino. Tomoyasu said she scolded him: “If you use my last name, I’m going come over to kill you. There aren’t that many Tachinos, just us. Everyone is going to know it’s me.’”

Still on the phone, the two began going through the Honolulu phone book — “It was really thick in those days,” Tomoyasu said — looking for suitable three-syllable surnames for the song.

“I was falling asleep. By 4 o’clock we were getting to the X and Y’s,” she said.

Reiplinger sounded out the name Yamada, then Yanagi.

“Then he started going, ‘That’s the one!’ Oh, thank God. I had a 7 o’clock class.”

Reiplinger liked the hard “g” sound in Yanagi, she said; “Tachino was too soft.”

(Tomoyasu suspects their foray through the phone book provided inspiration for “Japanese Roll Call,” another Reiplinger bit in which he recites a list of Japanese surnames in a commanding cadence: “Kanemitsu, Mitsuyoshi, Yoshimura …”)

“I thought he was just going to sing it in the show. I didn’t know it was going to be on a record,” she said.

“Fate Yanagi” was featured on Reiplinger’s Na Hoku Award-winning “Poi Dog” album, released by Mountain Apple Co. in 1978.

For the record, the real-life “Fate” didn’t go out with Mits Funai, just as the song instructed. In 1975 she married Jason Tomoyasu, a city paramedic who died of diabetes in 2014. According to Tomoyasu, Reiplinger had a friend named Mits but she has no idea whether the song refers to an actual person.

“There’s a Mits out there who doesn’t know who he is,” she said. “Or he’s like me; he’s in hiding. He doesn’t want to be part of the song, it’s so embarrassing.”

As for whether Barry Santos ever fixed his dinged surfboard with the can of resin under the bed, who knows?

Like many who knew Reiplinger or followed his career, Tomoyasu was stunned to hear of his death. He was missing for nearly a week before his body was found on a Maunawili hillside in January 1984.

Tomoyasu said she saw him at Ala Moana Center about 2-1/2 weeks before he died. He looked happy, she said, and told her he had gotten married, “had found God” and was off drugs. She joked that maybe he would have an “urusai” son.

“Oh, good! Now you get ‘bachi,’” she told him, using Japanese slang for “what goes around, comes around.” “‘Now you can have one just like you!’ He thought that was so funny.

“I heard that he died, and I’m going, ‘What? How can?’ It doesn’t make sense. None of us can understand it. For me he looked so happy and content. He found someone he loved and was making a life with her. He found Jesus. You just scratched your head.

“When I get to heaven the first thing I’m going to ask him is, ‘Eh, brah, what happened?’”

No longer mortified to be part of Hawaii comedy history, Tomoyasu said she now appreciates “Fate Yanagi” and what the song means to her generation, and what it represents.

“It reminds me that we lost a comic genius. It’s so sad,” she said. “We thought Rap was the funniest guy. He made us laugh at a time when everything was too serious. We had the Vietnam War … .”

Stone said she is investigating Reiplinger’s death and promises to reveal new information when the biography is published next year.

Watch Rap Reiplinger’s videos on Mountain Apple Co.’s YouTube channel.