At 4 p.m. Sunday, Richard Kiyabu Jr. was heading home on Kalanianaole Highway. The crowds running the Honolulu Marathon were long gone, but there was an elderly woman walking all by herself just past Kawaikui Beach Park.

“I drove home to change my clothes and headed back out to find her because I knew it would kill me to find out she got hurt or something,” Kiyabu said. When he got back to the woman, she was near Wailupe Fire Station. Another passer-by had stopped to help. Ayako Hayashi, 81, from Shiki City in Saitama prefecture, Japan, welcomed their help but refused to give up.

“The other lady, Faith, and I held Hayashi-san by her arms. Faith helped her stretch every so many yards,” Kiyabu said.

Then, like a growing parade of allies in a classic story, more people came to help. Mike Shiroma had run the marathon but then decided to turn around to meet the last runners in the race. He joined in the team to help Hayashi as they got closer to the Waikiki finish line. On Diamond Head Road, another woman joined to cheer on the group and offer assistance. At this point, names and introductions didn’t matter. There was just one goal — helping this lady finish her race. Along came a car with two women and a golden retriever, and they drove along with the group until the finish line, just for moral support.

“In the end, five of us went with Hayashi-san taking turns at her sides to the finish,” Kiyabu said. They let go of her just before the finish line so she could cross by herself, a requirement to complete the race. Hayashi’s time was 16 hours, 23 minutes and 9 seconds. She was the last person to finish, crossing the line around 9:45 p.m. Sunday.

Hayashi told Kiyabu, who speaks some Japanese, that she completed her first marathon 20 years ago at age 60 at Aragawa in Tokyo. She has completed seven marathons, four of which were Honolulu.

Reached for an interview by Honolulu Star-Advertiser editor David Butts, who speaks Japanese, Hayashi talked about the people who helped her along the way and how touched she was to see so many people waiting at the finish line for her to arrive. She worried that all those people waiting for her hadn’t eaten their dinner yet. “Honolulu people are so nice,” she said.

After Hayashi crossed the finish line, so many people wanted to take pictures with her. “I felt like a star!” she said.

The little group of supporters plans to meet Hayashi and her husband, 84-year-old Sekizo, for dinner at their hotel tonight, to learn one another’s names and to celebrate a spontaneous team effort and a victorious last-place finish.