About 500 Hawaii residents and visitors watched from the shore and the waters off Fort DeRussy Beach in Waikiki Saturday afternoon as family members and friends bade farewell to reality-TV star Beth Chapman, who rose to fame as Mrs. Dog on “Dog the Bounty Hunter.”

Chapman, 51, died Wednesday following a lengthy battle with cancer.

After a short prayer circle on a grassy stretch at Fort DeRussy Beach Park, a flotilla of outrigger canoes, stand-up paddle boarders, surfers and several large boats, including a catamaran, headed out in tribute. They were later joined by her husband Duane “Dog” Chapman and other family members, who paused about a mile off shore aboard the glass-bottom boat Haleiwa Queen.

The fanfare moved Colleen Kline, a visitor from Montana, who put off her return flight for a week so she could be at the service.

“This is emotional for me. We could tell that Beth cared for people from the way that she treated them on the show. She was not there just to rough them around, she truly cared for people,” Kline said.

Local fan Lisa Stender caught a bus from Mililani to get to the Waikiki service, which she carefully filmed on a mobile device.

“When I heard that she had cancer I cried,” Stender said. “She’s my hero. She’s my idol.”

Delorese Gregoire, founding director of Winners Camp, a leadership camp for adolescents and teens, said she was at the service to say goodbye to a woman whose flamboyance belied her generosity, especially when the philanthropy involved kids.

“She had lots of challenges in her own life. She realized by giving back to the community, she could help other kids. She never forgot her roots,” Gregoire said. “She never hesitated to donate to Winners Camp. She was just a wonderful person.”

Beth Chapman first met her husband in 1986 and circled him socially and professionally for the better part of a decade before becoming a couple. They wed in 2006.

The Chapmans gained fame from their hit A&E series “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” which followed the exploits of their bailbond business in Hawaii. By the time “Dog the Bounty Hunter” wrapped up in 2012, Beth Chapman was a celebrity in her own right.

The couple’s next TV venture was “Dog and Beth: On the Hunt,” which ran on CMT from 2013 to 2015. Beth Chapman served as executive producer for the series.

She was first diagnosed with stage II lung cancer in 2017. The ordeal was chronicled in a 2017 A&E special, “Dog &Beth: The Fight of Their Lives.” Chapman was deemed cancer-free following surgery in November of that year, however, emergency throat surgery a year later revealed the disease had returned.

At Saturday’s prayer circle at Fort DeRussy, Duane Chapman explained to onlookers that his wife, who was born in Denver, loved Hawaii and had requested that she have a Hawaiian-­style service here.

He told a story about how a Hawaiian man from Molokai had told him that when his mother was buried in Hilo she became part of the “earth, sea, sky and rain.”

Chapman said that he now considers himself part of Oahu, but that his wife “got there before I did.”

Later aboard the Haleiwa Queen, the couple’s youngest daughter, Bonnie Chapman, scattered a portion of her mother’s ashes from a Ziploc bag into the sea while flanked by her father and by her niece Maddie, Lyssa Chapman’s daughter. Another portion is expected to be taken to Beth Chapman’s family in Colorado, where additional services are planned next month.

Family and others then tossed purple orchids into the water. Duane Chapman threw a shaka to his late wife and embraced his granddaughter, Maddie. Onlookers sang “Aloha ‘Oe,” a traditional Hawaiian farewell song.