×

Visit dream come true for Mauian paralyzed by a ‘medical mystery’

Ten minutes after she woke up on New Year’s Day 2013, Kahului resident Mahealani Bettencourt suddenly found herself paralyzed from the waist down.

“No warning, no nothing,” Bettencourt said. “It’s a medical mystery.”

With no family to support her, Bettencourt has been learning to live on her own and adjusting to life in a wheelchair for the past four years. So it was a dream come true for her to be carried aboard Hokule’a during the voyaging canoe’s arrival at Honolua Bay Thursday.

“I’ve never had anything so good happen to me in the last four years,” Bettencourt said. “I don’t have (family) support, and these are strangers that are coming into my life and are making something happen so for even two hours I can just forget about all my pain and suffering.”

Born and raised on Maui, Bettencourt was a runner for 22 years, an avid outdoorswoman and vegetarian who swore off burgers and soda. She did public relations for Times Supermarket and worked for Clinical Labs of Hawaii, collecting DNA for the federal prosecutor’s office. Four days after she was paralyzed, Bettencourt was hired as a lab technician at Maui Memorial Medical Center, a job she’d been trying to get for two years. She had to turn it down.

To this day, doctors still don’t know what caused her paralysis. But through hard work and physical therapy, Bettencourt has started to regain feeling in her legs and can now walk 80 feet with the help of a walker.

Bettencourt, 54, said she wanted to do go aboard Hokule’a not just for the experience but to show people with disabilities that neither age nor a wheelchair should hold them back from dreaming.

“Good things still happen out there, and there’s still good people out there,” Bettencourt said. “Whoever’s going through a rough time, whoever’s in a storm, there’s light at the end of that.”

Bettencourt said Hokule’a crew member Archie Kalepa spoke with other crew members and was able to make it happen. Kalepa, a lifelong Lahaina resident, said that when he heard the request, his response was “absolutely.”

“We don’t get a chance too often to share the canoe with handicapped people,” Kalepa said. “This canoe means so much to the people of Hawaii . . . and so people like that very, very seldom get a chance to board the canoe. If we can provide that experience, by all means, why not? It’s Hawaii’s canoe.”

Bettencourt eagerly followed Hokule’a’s three-year Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage online and on TV and saw the journey mirror her own life. As Hokule’a traveled around the world, strangers became friends, and the same has held true for Bettencourt, who’s found new family with Christ the King Church and the Maui Disability Alliance.

“They take me on that journey with them because I watch them wherever they go,” Bettencourt said of Hokule’a. “You feel so happy that these people represent Hawaii. To get a chance to go aboard the Hokule’a, that’s once in a lifetime.

“Some people want clothes. Some people want a car. Some people want a house. But for me, it’s more a connection with people. That’s more special to me.”

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper?
     
Support Local Journalism on Maui

Only $99/year

Subscribe Today