i started to think about okay um i have an opportunity here to stand on the outside and there were other things you know we they wanted to build a huge landfill over one of our biggest water aquifers in hawaii all of our water comes from groundwater so you know i and a whole bunch of other people we went out and got petitions and we organized and ultimately thankfully were able to get that that project canceled but it it got as far as it did because of a politician who was kind of in the pocket of the landfill company and so i started to think you know i can i can stand on the outside and hold a sign or circulate a petition or i can try to put myself in a position of influence and decision making to um directly impact a lot of these environmental issues that i really cared a lot about and that’s what led me to uh run for state house in 2002 uh my how old were you i was 21 and my dad that was the first that my dad ran for city council that same year so it was kind of it was kind of fun for us to share so he ran for city council out in waianae and i was running for state house in ewa beach and so our districts like they didn’t overlap really but they were adjacent to each other but every morning it was like okay my mom would pack a lunch and um uh send him out and i went out we were sign waving every day and knocking on doors every day for for months but that was that was both of our introduction into running for office at the same time and it was for me it was a totally it was a totally foreign experience because i had no you know formal education in it i was not a part of a debate team had not been trained to public speak in any way at all and on top of all of that total 100 introvert like you know i had my circle of friends growing up but i was i was so shy and i was fine with it because i just hung out with who i wanted to hang out with but anybody outside of that i would not um i wouldn’t talk to people i’d make my sister go out and talk to people and i’d read books and do my martial arts and yoga and just do do my thing and so to then put choose to put myself in a position where i’d have to learn how to give speeches i’d have to figure out how to pick up the phone and call total strangers which was anxiety-inducing in and of itself but not only do that but ask them like hey would you like to donate to my campaign for state house to then go like i never forget the first day i went to go knock on doors like i knew enough about i’d done enough research to know okay if i’m going to run for this seat i’m going to run to win and in order to do that i have to convince this many people to vote for me in order to win this race so i had i had the math figured out and i had the voting list people’s addresses and names and um literally got on the computer made like this black and white kind of janky brochure saying this is who i am and so i had you know copies of that that i went and made at the coffee shop and and i sat in my car it’s like a aqua colored geo metro two-door geo metro um on old ewa beach road in in waipahu and um it took me about 30 minutes in the car to summon up the courage to go knock on that first door and i was terrified absolutely terrified just thinking of every scenario that could possibly go wrong but also like what are the first words that need to come out of my mouth and then what if they ask me this question what if i don’t know the answer just all of these different things and and you know like one knocked on the first door and like this wonderful old filipino lady answered the door and she’s like hey how are you wonderfully kind and offered me a glass of water and like the whole thing’s like oh my god okay then went through the whole scenario all over again for the next door a whole scenario like every single door was was a major obstacle uh for me and and ultimately like why put myself through this and and how did i get through it it really just it that groundedness and and the ability to step way outside of anything i was comfortable with came from that that desire to serve and knowing that ultimately keeping reminding myself ultimately like why do you care so much about yourself this is not about you if you wanted to do something for yourself you would certainly not be doing this you’d be out surfing right now and um and that was that was my introduction into uh into elected politics so you won did your dad win i won and he won yep and my mom my mom was serving she served one four-year term in the board of education so for two years from 2002 to four um the three of us were all like in serving in different buildings all in the same kind of you know quarter quarter mile quarter square mile area in honolulu it was it was fun and and obviously you liked it at some level you liked the impact that you were able to have because you carried on with this sort of yeah it is life i never once thought you know when i won that election it was a five-way democratic primary first that i had to get through and then a general election that i got through i yes i liked the impact but i never once thought that i want to have a career quote-unquote career in politics i was absolutely not attached to that i thought okay hey this is something i can do now and i’ll make the most of it and then you know we’ll see we’ll see where it goes and i ended up serving just one term there because of iraq
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