Born and raised in Hawaii, I graduated from Waianae High School. Not having the opportunity to attend higher education, I learned early on in life that having a good attitude and wanting to learn and improve one's self-was very important. 

 

I joined the U.S.  Navy for four years then worked for Hawaiian Tel for 32 years, retiring in 2003. 

 

I became a Ham Radio operator in the 70's and always been interested in radio communications as a hobbyist. 

 

I started working with Hawaiian Tel as a telephone repairman making $3.04 an hour.  Can you imagine that? I worked my way up to a data technician, supervisor, and even worked temporarily with or staff department, given the task to write an application for our data business that helped us to keep track of our customers, the products they purchased, and other pertinent data that helped us to keep our customers happy.  It was called CARS (Customer Accounts Records System).  What is interesting is that I had to learn a mainframe programming application called Quazar (I think it was called) that resided on a mainframe computer. 

 

I was a supervisor for the data shop for three years before being asked to join our Federal team providing telecommunication expertise for the military. 

 

ln my final position with GTE Hawaiian Tel, I moved to the commercial accounts as a senior sales engineer working for Bob Alamillo. 

 

Major accomplishments while with Hawaiian Tel include:
 

• Design and implementation of Video Conferencing Systems for customers such as Bank of Hawaii, Kamehameha Schools, Hawaii Department of Education (Distance Education). 
   

• Design and implementation of Laptop computers into the Honolulu Police Department mobiles on Oahu. 

 

After retirement, I worked for about a year as a video conferencing engineer installing systems in Hawaii for Video Insights on the mainland.

 

I then worked for the Hawaii State Civil Defense (SCD) as their Systems Engineer for 3 years. 

 

Major accomplishments with SCD include: 

 

 

• Design and installation of their State Wide video conferencing system. Which allowed State EOCs to communicate all together on single video conference simultaneously.
   

• Implementation of a PC based network to enable desktop video conferencing between the State Civil Defense and other strategic offices with the state and worldwide.