AJ Lazear, 17, had a bright spirit and an amazing smile, both of which were evident Saturday as he enthusiastically climbed into a powered hang glider for a trike flight above Oahu’s North Shore.

The teen from Flower Mound, Texas, was vacationing on Oahu with his parents, Rose and Wes Lazear, who had taken a similar ride on a trike 20 years ago and gifted him the experience hoping that he too would have a blast.

“I just wanted to give him a good memory. We’re like, ‘You’re going to love it. It’s going to be so much fun,’” Rose Lazear told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Monday. “He was beaming when he was sitting there all suited up to fly off. My husband said that he looked happy all the way through — a really deep level of happiness. I was really looking forward to seeing him when he came back.”

The Lazears waited for their son to complete the 30-minute ride, but he never came back.

AJ Lazear was identified Monday by the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office as one of the victims of Saturday morning’s fatal crash of a powered hang glider at Kaena Point State Park. The other victim was 58-year-old Marc Hill of Waialua, an instructor with Paradise Air Hawaii Inc., doing business as Paradise Hang Gliding.

Denise Sanders, co-owner of Paradise Air Hawaii Inc. at Dillingham Airfield, said that before Saturday’s crash, Paradise Air had a perfect safety record since opening in 2002. Sanders said the motorized hang glider and pilot involved in the crash were contracted by the company.

The craft was destroyed, and Hill and Lazear were pronounced dead at the scene.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash. The FAA identified the two-seater aircraft as a single- engine Edge XT-912-L ultralight trike. According to FAA records, the weight-shift- control light sport aircraft made by Airborne Windsports was built in 2016.

Originally from Liverpool, England, Hill was a windsurfing, kitesurfing and basic flight instructor who lived all around the world, according to information on the Paradise Air Hang Gliders website. The former Hawaii paragliding champion lived in the state in the late 1980s and ’90s and, after sailing around the world and then living in Colorado, moved back to Oahu in 2020, where he became an FAA-certified flight instructor and took a job with Paradise, the website said.

The NTSB is expected to release a preliminary report in two to three weeks. The investigation is expected to be completed in 12 to 24 months.

Lazear should have been flying home from vacation today. His parents, who are still in Hawaii, are getting assistance from family members in Hawaii as well as the Visitor Aloha Society of Hawaii, which helps visitors in crisis. It’s challenging figuring out how to live without their son’s physical presence.

Rose Lazear said, “(AJ) was the light of my life, and he had a heart of gold and he was very caring.”

AJ Lazear, who had just graduated from high school in May and had shown interest in possibly becoming a paramedic, still lived at home. A homeschooled child, he and his family were close — they had never really been apart.

The family doted on Lazear, who was the youngest of five children by a landslide — his next-youngest sibling, at 32, is nearly double his age. The family was in Hawaii to visit Lazear’s sister, who lives with her family on Oahu.

Rose Lazear said, “I loved doing my best to make him happy. I loved having him in my life.”

The aftermath of the crash has been horrible, she said.

“You know you put your kid on some fantastic experience to make happy memories, and you get there and they tell you he’s dead. I was just in absolute disbelief — heartbroken, and devastated and crushed,” Lazear said.

She said sirens were probably going off for about 15 minutes before they found out there was a problem. She said another pilot expressed concern that Hill and her son had not returned. Lazear said the pilot went to look for them, and was back within five minutes — leading her to believe that the crash happened near the end of the flight.

The couple zoomed up to Kaena Point State Park Reserve Mokuleia Section, where a fireman guarding the closed gate confirmed that there were no survivors. She said a few passersby showed compassion.

“There was one gentleman. He had stopped for a minute, and I went to speak to him,” Lazear said. “He said that he had heard the explosion — I believe that’s the word that he used — and he had drove over there to see if he could help, but upon arrival he knew that there was nothing that could be done at that time.”

The couple stayed near the blocked area, which was a ways from the crash site, until their son’s body had been removed by the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Lazear said, “I didn’t want to leave him. I hated that he had to go off by himself and go off and be in that cold dark place with the Medical Examiner. I hated that he had to be alone.”

Lazear leaves behind a lifetime of simple, impish moments that now warm his parents’ hearts.

For instance, he called them by their first names, something Lazear said other generations wouldn’t have dared to do. She also recalls that he was all about fun and had a zest for life — and cookies and other tasty treats.

“We made cookies any time he asked, and when they were done he would take a whole dinner plate and scamper away with a big grin — it was like a joke between us,” she said. “He did the same if there was any tasty treat — take the whole bag or box and hold in such a way to say, ‘It’s mine, you can’t have any,’ grinning all the way. I always let him. I said yes to every happy experience that we were able to.”

Lazear’s father, Wes Lazear, also recalls a fun memory of his son from just this month.

“AJ was playing a card game with his first grade niece. When it became apparent that she was winning, he got a smirk on his face, ramped things up and proclaimed as a teenager would, ‘She can’t beat me … I play video games!’ Case closed.”

Another time, father and son were at a three-band show at House of Blues, which was Lazear’s first live concert.

“It was crazy loud, and for the first time the energy outwardly infiltrated his veins,” Wes Lazear said. “AJ cut loose with dancing and jumping like never before.”

The couple said they will miss their bright, caring, funny child.

Rose Lazear said she will especially miss telling her son how much she loved him, and seeing the silly ways that he chose to let her know that he loved her, too.

When Lazear was little, she said, she used to take him to Chuck E. Cheese, where he exchanged kisses with her for quarters. As Lazear got older, his mother remembers that he would sometimes scamper off with a grin when asked for a hug. But when it was allowed, she said, “He stood sideways and shuffled between my arms, almost like a penguin, with that grin, standing with his arms straight down by his sides — again kind of like a penguin. It always made me smile.”

Rose Lazear recalls another recent time when she jokingly sent her son a text telling him that she loved him, although they were standing just 2 feet apart.

“The way he turned around and the grin on his face was priceless,” she said. “I used to tell him, ‘I love you so much my heart could burst.’ I told him every day I loved him. Yep, every day.”

———

Star-Advertiser staff writers Leila Fujimori and Timothy Hurley contributed to this report.