The surfing community is mourning the sudden death of gifted young Hawaii surfer Kalani David, a former junior world champion, in Costa Rica Sept. 17.

David, 24, was surfing when he suffered a massive seizure and drowned, said Bobbi Lee, conference director of the National Scholastic Surfing Association Hawaii, with whose family David lived in Honolulu.

“We’ve known him since he was 7 years old,” Lee said. “He was an amazing young man who had a big heart, full of love, very giving and caring.”

A graduate of Waialua middle and high schools, David was a “well-behaved, good kid, very humble regarding his talents,” and a stellar surfer making an impressive comeback after years of health setbacks, said Mike Latronic, editor and publisher of Free Surf Magazine.

“He was a child superstar prodigy, the best surfer/skater in the world, had medaled in pro events in both,” said Peter King, a surf photographer. “Kalani David was one of those athletes with a good basic game, but also an incredible air game, which I saw in Panama when he won the world title,” Latronic said. “He took that skateboard approach to the waves — he could excel in either powerful or gutless surf.”

In 2016, after suffering his first seizure, David was diagnosed with a congenital heart disease, Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, Lee said.

He had open-heart surgery for WPW in early 2017, but suffered another seizure in May, said Miko Parker, Lee’s daughter and assistant NSSA Hawaii director.

Parker added her late brother, renowned North Shore surfer Rory Parker, coached David to win his first national junior surfing championship, and her 5-year-old son, named after his uncle, considered David his best friend.

Having learned the cause might attributable to epilepsy, David and his doctors “were working on getting his medication right,” Parker said.

Advised never to go in the water alone, Parker said, David was surfing with his sister, Rachel Feeney Zamora, who called for help and tried unsuccessfully to revive him.

He was visiting Costa Rica, the nation of his birth, to obtain dual citizenship “so he could try out for the Costa Rican Olympic team,” Lee said.

David had lost sponsorships during his health crisis and a general downturn in the surf apparel industry, but on the North Shore, “he had a lot of families looking after him; he was like everybody’s kid,” King said.

Noting his son, Bunker King, was the same age as David, King described the County as a small town where everyone would “lend a hand, a ride, a meal, a place to stay, and Kalani needed all those things at different times.”

Despite the seizures, he resumed competing when he could, and shone.

“In his first time competing in over a year, North Shore native Kalani David advanced at the HIC Pro in Haleiwa on Wednesday with a score of 9.33 (out of a possible 10),” the Star-Advertiser reported Nov. 2, 2017.

David also stood out in the trials for the Billabong Pipe Masters in 2019 and in the December 2021, HIC Pipe Pro. He found new sponsors and qualified for the World Surf League Challenger Series, but had to withdraw when he had a seizure while driving, King said.

“Kalani’s life was pretty hard to make ends meet,” King said, “but he just kept fighting — he was so young, he lived a huge life for someone of that age — he was known internationally, but he was a real product of the North Shore.”

Warm-hearted and appreciative, “you always had the feeling he would overcome all these things, he was the people’s champ, always,” King said.

A paddle out for David will be held at noon. Nov. 5 at Banzai Pipeline, Lee said, noting he would have turned 25 on Nov. 4, “and we were so looking forward to celebrating his birthday when he was home.”

She added, “I just want the world to know what a beautiful young man he was.”

In addition to his sister Rachel Feeney Zamora, of Costa Rica, David is survived by parents David and Andrea David of Florida, brother Keoni David, and his biological mother, Maureen Barrientos.