LAHAINA, Hawaii — Dustin Tester, who grew up in Lahaina and has run a surf school on Maui for 25 years, started crying on Aug. 8, 2023, when two of her employees arrived at her home in Wailuku smelling of smoke. It was at that moment she realized they had narrowly escaped the Lahaina wildfire.
A frantic 24 hours followed, as Tester made sure the other surf instructors and photographers who worked for Maui Surfer Girls had made it out alive.
Eventually she sighed in relief, as she learned they were all accounted for, but she was devastated to discover seven people on her staff had lost their homes near Front Street in the wildfire. In a quick moment of action, she launched a fundraiser to help them put their lives back together again.
“They call me Mama D. I'm their boss, but I'm also a lot of their best friends and mentor them,” Tester said, describing her relationship to her team. Some of them even attended her overnight surf camp as teenagers and later became surf instructors.
She was blown away by the support from the community, who donated $144,000 to her GoFundMe. She was able to link the GoFundMe campaign to her nonprofit Mana O Maui, which she had originally started in May 2023 to raise funds for scholarships to help people attend overnight surf camps.
Tester gave $15,000 to each of her employees who lost their homes and another $3,000 each to five employees who had less work as tourism slowed in the aftermath of the fire. Maui Surfer Girls shutdown for about three months and many of her staff held second jobs, which they lost.
“They were completely unemployed after the fires,” said Tester.
In the months following the fires, several employees who lost their homes have moved off the island as the high cost of housing and diminished employment opportunities made it challenging to stay on Maui.
Lance and Raye Connor, a married couple with two kids who both worked for Maui Surfers Girls, ran out of their Lahaina condo the day of the fire as flames were coming towards them. Their home burned down and they still don’t know what happened to their cat, who had first alerted them to the fire by meowing.
Recently, they bought a home in Florida with the help of Tester’s fundraiser, their families, and about $10,000 in silver coins that were in their Lahaina condo and luckily survived the fire.
“They would have loved to come back to Maui, but they're priced out,” said Tester.
Another employee, Nicole Nakamura, is still on Maui, but has moved about seven times since her home burned in the fire as she struggles to restart her life.
Along with the fundraiser for her employees, Tester raised about $24,000 for four women and four teenage girls who have been impacted by the Maui fires to attend surf camp.
“The GoFundMe was super pivotal to help in the community, not only through giving money to my staff to start their lives, but also to help the community members heal through our programs,” said Tester.
Tester also recently finished an application for a $100,000 grant via the nonprofit Lokahi Pacific to build a cottage on her Wailuku property in order to provide housing for one of her employees.
On Thursday, Maui County is organizing a paddle out off Hanakaoo Beach Park across from the Lahaina Civic Center in remembrance of the lives lost. Tester, along with the Connors, Nakamura and her other current and former employees, will take a catamaran together into the ocean, bringing surfboards and flowers with them for the paddle out. Tester says she hopes the event will offer some healing and closure.
Tester is currently fundraising for scholarships for Maui Surfer Girls upcoming surf camp, which will be their second annual surf therapy camp, called Soul Retrieval.
“This particular program is perfect for any of the fire victims, because there's a lot of soul loss that happens when we're in big trauma situations,” said Tester.
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Michelle Broder Van Dyke covers the Hawaiian Islands for Spectrum News Hawaii. Email her at michelle.brodervandyke@charter.com.