Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 11, Number 4, 1 April 1994 — Going straight: Hawaiian prisoner finds calling, turns life around [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Going straight: Hawaiian prisoner finds calling, turns life around

by Patrick Johnston To look at and listen to Lenny Padayao there isn't mueh to indicate that he was a convicted criminal who spent the past 20 years in federal prisons. Articulate, soft-spoken, well-groomed, he is not your typieal ex-con. That is probably the way he would like it. The man who effectively turned his life around - Chuck Colson, a former prisonerwho now runs a Christian prison fellowship program - also showed no signs that he had gone to prison and that had impressed Padayao. "Usually prisoners ean tell when someone has done time. I wasn't able to tell with Colson until he told me. It was at that point I realized that he had something in his life that I wanted." For Padayao, a FilipinoHawaiian, Christianity filled a void that had been missing for most of his life. When Padayao was eleven months old, his father murdered his mother and he was sent to live with his grandmother. His grandmother, angry over the

loss of her daughter, abused the child. By the age of seven he had run away from home and was later arrested for burglary. Padayao says of his childhood, "There were no positive male figures in my life." Most of his teen-age years were spent in reform school. "I was more accepted in there than I was at home," Padayao says. At 17, a month after his release from reform school in 1971, he eommitted a number of robberies, was caught, convicted and given a 105-consecutive-year prison sentence. He served 19 and a half years.

In 1984, after spending time in several different federal penitentiaries (largely because of his diseipline problems), he met Colson and his life took a turn for the better. He was released in 1990 and started working as a security officer in Seattle for Consejo, a government and United Way operation that offers, among other things, mental health and substance abuse programs for youth. Nearly two years ago, he was

hired as an outreach worker for Consejo and now works with troubled young Asian and Pacific Islanders in the Seattle area, linking them with programs, both public and private, to help straighten out their lives. Padayao says, "There is a real problem with cultural identity among these groups. For example, a Cambodian kid that has eome to America has three lives. There is the life he brought from his home country. There is his American life. Then there is the life he creates for himself. This creates all kinds of problems." He does not work with a lot of native Hawaiians but Padayao thinks that does not mean that the need is not there. "A lot of Hawaiians are out there and they are probably underserved. Every time we piek up native Hawaiians there is a lot of substance abuse involved." Padayao feels that many delinquent young Hawaiians had a childhood similar to his own with no role models and a lot of physieal and mental abuse. He adds, however, that these days there are

more programs in plaee to monitor and deal with problems among young people. "When I went through thb judiciary system there wasn't very mueh to assist me. Now we ean assess youth, their family, their friends, and we ean find mentors and role models." Christianity, Padayao believes, ean help turn around a criminal's life but he says that more is need-

ed. "I believe that if you take the word of God to a man and that man accepts it, he still needs additional help. There has to be follow up, there has to be support. You have to meet the needs of the prisoner and the people in his life. That is what my job is about. ... I believe if you meet that person's needs then the word of God becomes effective."

Lenny Padayao and his wife Darlene