Buy a poke bowl this month to help support injured surfer

The act of eating a poke bowl generally is a solo affair, but the Friends of Mycah poke bowl created by Da Hawaiian Poke Co. isn’t just about you.

The Friends of Mycah bowl contains spicy ahi poke, sweet chili sauce, furikake and tempura chips on a bed of sushi rice. It sells for $12 for a regular-size portion and $15 for a large, and $3 from each one sold during May will help offset medical expenses for the family of Mycah Muranaka.

The 20-year-old surfer was diagnosed with surfer’s myelopathy, which has left him paralyzed him from the waist down since January.

He didn’t drop in on someone else’s wave. He didn’t wipe out. Nobody else’s board hit him.

While out on the water, Mycah may have hyperextended his back muscles and pinched a crucial blood vessel, said his father, Kyle Muranaka.

By the time he was loaded into the ambulance, “he couldn’t feel his legs,” Kyle said.

Mycah has returned home from the hospital and is undergoing rehabilitative therapy.

Kyle once attended Ma‘ema‘e Elementary School, and it was Ma‘ema‘e Principal Lenn Uyeda and teacher Cody Okimoto who told a friend about the situation affecting their former student.

That friend was Mark Oyama, a partner in Da Hawaiian Poke Co.

“We are honored to be able to work with Mycah and his family to help raise money for his treatment and to bring awareness to surfer’s myelopathy,” Oyama said. “We wanted to be able to help him and his family by raising funds to assist them with their medical expenses and let them know that in Hawaii we stick together and we wish the very best for them.”

Da Hawaiian Poke Co. raised $600 for the family during a May 6 fundraiser at the elementary school.

The company also sold the bowls Friday at the Manoa Festival of Music and Fair, staged primarily to benefit the Manoa Elementary School Association of Parents and Teachers.

“We will be doing an event for Make-A-Wish Foundation on June 24 and hope to continue to raise awareness for what we are doing for Mycah by featuring his bowl at that event as one of our dishes,” Oyama said.

“We feel that as long as there is a need, the least we can do is to try and help. As of now we don’t have plans for a potential June bowl, so we are most likely going to feature his bowl in June as well.”

Mycah’s family is grateful. “We’re very blessed and overwhelmed,” his father said.

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