Chiyeko “Chiye” Takitani doesn’t mind if awards and recognition go to other people. She prefers it. When Takitani, 89, was selected as this year’s recipient of The Queen’s Medical Center Ho‘omau Award for longevity of service, her first reaction was that there was probably someone else more deserving.

“April (Light), the administrator, approached me in March, and was I very reluctant. I said, ‘You must have other people ahead of me,’ but April said they wanted me to receive the award,” Takitani said by phone earlier this month. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, plans to make the presentation at a volunteer luncheon in April were scrubbed by social distancing protocols. Takitani eventually received her award trophy at a small, private presentation in July.

Takitani approached this Young at Heart profile with the same humility: “I’m kind of torn (about doing this, too). I don’t like the limelight. I do not like attention. I’m sure there are other people that have been volunteering just as long,” Takitani said.

Queen’s spokeswoman Minna Sugimoto explained that “ho‘omau” can be translated as longevity, to endure, remain steadfast and persevere, and that Takitani has been volunteering at The Queen’s Medical Center for a steadfast 23 years.

Takitani came to Queen’s after working 34 years at Castle &Cooke. Starting off as an entry-level clerk- stenographer, she’d worked her way up to being executive secretary for Castle &Cooke Chairman and CEO Malcolm MacNaughton. MacNaughton was also chairman of the Queen’s board of trustees, and when Takitani retired, he suggested that she consider working at Queen’s as a volunteer.

“We had a lot of contact with the community relations department at Queen’s, so I got to know the ladies in that department, and so when I retired I thought it would be something to do,” she explained.

Takitani spent a year as a volunteer member of the community relations staff but found her calling in helping patients’ family members in the surgical waiting room. When her sister, Machiko “Machi” Tsuruya, retired from the University of Hawaii in 2004, Takitani recruited her into the Queen’s volunteer program.

Takitani said working with the family members of surgical patients was the most fulfilling part of being a volunteer.

“I like being with the people and making them comfortable and helping them with any questions they have. If they’re experiencing a lot of stress, I try to help them.”

Takitani wasn’t thinking of Hawaii — let alone Queen’s — in 1949 when she decided to go to Woodbury Business College in Los Angeles. She’d been born and raised in California, and was 11 in 1942 when her family was uprooted and sent to the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona during World War II. They spent three years behind the wire (“from July 1942 to September 1945”) and were then released to put their lives back together as best they could.

Looking back at the incarceration camp experience, Takitani describes it as “nothing that I feel real sad about. That was 75 years ago.”

It was while Takitani was at Woodbury that she met her husband-to- be; he was in a group of students from Hawaii. They were married in 1952, and he then brought her to Hawaii.

Hawaii has been her home ever since.

Twenty-three years of volunteering were put on hold in March by COVID-19 protocols. The pandemic has also stifled her social life. One of the things Takitani enjoyed when she wasn’t at Queen’s was going out to lunch with friends and family. Lunch on Wednesday was reserved for her sister, and she had a group that met every month at the Ala Moana Food Court.

That’s all on hold now, too.

“I miss seeing my friends, but we can’t do that anymore so I’m staying home,” she said.

But staying home doesn’t mean that she’s not staying active.

“I am 89 years old. I made 89 (in) July this year,” she said, emphasizing that neither her age nor the current COVID-19 restrictions have kept her from doing at least a little walking each day.

Takitani takes a cane with her when she goes walking outside, but doesn’t need it when she “walks for exercise” in her apartment.

And that’s not all: “I still drive, and I go for my own groceries. The first hour (for shopping) is when I go.”

One more thing. Don’t let her hear anyone in their 60s or 70s talk about being old.

“When people tell me they’re 75, I tell them, ‘Oh, you’re just a baby yet!’”