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Adult Friends for Youth social worker’s death provides inspiration

  • CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
                                Adult Friends for Youth counselor Titi Takai, standing, led a visualization exercise Wednesday at McKinley High School with a group of kids that she took over from Mala­kai “Mo” Maumalanga, the director of redirectional services who was killed about a year ago in a shooting at his Aiea home.

    CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM

    Adult Friends for Youth counselor Titi Takai, standing, led a visualization exercise Wednesday at McKinley High School with a group of kids that she took over from Mala­kai “Mo” Maumalanga, the director of redirectional services who was killed about a year ago in a shooting at his Aiea home.

  • COURTESY PHOTO / 2018
                                Mala­kai “Mo” Maumalanga.

    COURTESY PHOTO / 2018

    Mala­kai “Mo” Maumalanga.

  • JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARADVERTISER.COM
                                ”<strong>Mo had gotten in so much trouble that he was enrolled in almost every school. … At one point the family took him back to Tonga. When he returned he struggled with people labeling him. He was angry. He didn’t feel love. The love was the part that we were trying to pull out of him. We knew he had it in him.”</strong>
                                <strong>Deborah Spencer-Chun</strong>
                                <em>The AFY president and CEO, pictured above, counseled Mo Maumalanga when he was a teen and invited him to live with her family after he was released from prison</em>

    JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARADVERTISER.COM

    Mo had gotten in so much trouble that he was enrolled in almost every school. … At one point the family took him back to Tonga. When he returned he struggled with people labeling him. He was angry. He didn’t feel love. The love was the part that we were trying to pull out of him. We knew he had it in him.”

    Deborah Spencer-Chun

    The AFY president and CEO, pictured above, counseled Mo Maumalanga when he was a teen and invited him to live with her family after he was released from prison

Malakai “Mo” Maumalanga was shot to death at his multigenerational Aiea home at 9:45 p.m. March 27, 2021. The crime, which police classified as a second-­degree murder, is still unsolved. Read more

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