From its golden sun to its turquoise surf, Hawaii can always take your breath away. But it’s the colorful leis that may dazzle the most.

The island’s exquisite array of flowers, valued for their fragrances, are harvested by Hawaiians for the ancient tradition of lei making. 

Hawaii native Meleana Estes picks flowers – like the valued flower puakenikeni, known as the perfume flower tree ten cent flower – to create a colorful palette for her leis. A single lei can use 300 individual flowers and take hours to make.

An “expression of aloha”

Hawaiians have been proudly sewing leis for more than 1,000 years. It’s a tradition that was introduced by early Polynesian settlers who wore garlands around their necks or heads as a gesture of respect for the gods.

There’s never a wrong time to bestow someone with a lei, Estes says. Today, Hawaiians hand out leis for nearly every occasion – from weddings to funerals, to airport pickups and beyond.

“Really a lei is your expression of aloha. Your love,” Estes explained, adding that it can also show a warm welcome to a house guest.

Estes learned the intricate art of lei-making from her grandmother or “Tutu,” and published a book called “Lei Aloha” to celebrate her traditions. 

“She was very intentional. I feel like my Tutu would think about it for three days prior, you know, as she’d start gathering with intention for that one person,” Estes said.

With dozens ofspecies of flowers growing on the islands, the designs are endless. Estes makes extraordinary creations for family and friends using a long needle and thread. 

“It’s beautiful, very architectural,” Estes said of the process.

You can see the colorful creations on display at the Annual Lei Day Celebration in Hawaii, held every May 1 since 1929. Dozens of master lei makers enter their work for a chance of being crowned best in show by judges, including Jamie Adams Detwiler.

“It’s really difficult” to pick just one winner, Detwiler said, noting that she looks for “what feeling” the leis bring to her and that they stay true to the lei method.

This year’s winner: a customary lei kui or sewn lei.

Getting creative

But while lei making remains popular, its future could be in peril. Suburban sprawl has paved over many flower farms and climate change has overheated remaining land. An estimated 90 percent of flowers used in leis are now imported from countries like Thailand.

Andrew Mau, who owns a small Oahu boutique called ISLAND-BOY, where he makes leis from mostly family sourced flowers, said he’s seeing the impact firsthand.  

“Everybody’s personal lei making stash or, you know, garden or mango tree or whatever you have, it’s been reduced,” he said.

The fact that a lei only lasts around two or three days has also added more stress on the island’s dwindling flower stock, forcing lei-makers like himself to adapt. 

“We work with what we can get. Sometimes we don’t get enough flowers to make a lei. We use unripe fruit. An ornamental banana. We recently had someone bring in avocados from their tree,” said Mau, though he admits it breaks from tradition.

Mau’s work – particularly his “forever lei” – is so popular it regularly sells out. 

“A forever lei is our response to the perishability of flowers. We work with wood beads – seeds, shells, nuts…it doesn’t have an expiration date,” he explained. 

PUNA (HawaiiNewsNow) – Hawaii County police arrested a man for operating a vehicle under the influence of an intoxicant and for negligent homicide after a deadly pedestrian crash Friday.

Dallas Brooks, 30, was arrested Friday evening after he hit Maxwell Robertson Sherword, 21, in Kurtistown.

According to police, at around 7:20 p.m. Brooks was traveling in an SUV eastbound on Orchidland Drive, near the intersection of 36th Avenue, when he struck Sherwood.

At the time of the crash, police said Sherwood was in the roadway and not in a marked crosswalk.

Officials said a witness told police that other vehicles had swerved to avoid hitting a man who was located in the middle of the roadway.

Sherwood was taken to the Hilo Benioff Medical Center, where he later died.

Police have ordered an autopsy to determine the exact cause of death.

Brooks was not injured as a result of the crash.

The investigation is ongoing, but police believe alcohol is a factor in the crash.

Brooks was arrested for operating a vehicle under the influence of an intoxicant and for negligent homicide. He remains in custody at the Hilo Police Station pending further investigation.

Anyone with information is asked to call Officer Joshua Rodby-Tomas at (808) 961-2339 or email Joshua.Rodby-Tomas@hawaiicounty.gov.

Tipsters who prefer to remain anonymous may call CrimeStoppers at (808) 961-8300.

This is Hawaii County’s 13th traffic fatality of 2025 as compared to 16 traffic fatalities this same time last year.

Copyright 2025 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

Billionaires are no strangers to extensive real estate portfolios, and many of them are building their own Doomsday bunkers.

Shall we count Mark Zuckerberg among them? If you ask him, no.

The Meta CEO said on a recent episode of the podcast “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von” that he does “have an underground tunnel” at his ranch on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, though he resisted characterizing it as a bunker.

“There’s this whole meme about how people are saying I built this, like, bunker underground. It’s like more of underground storage type of situation,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s sort of a tunnel that just goes to another building.”

Zuckerberg’s real estate portfolio includes expansive holdings in Hawaii. He began snapping up land there more than a decade ago. He reportedly paid $100 million for roughly 750 acres in 2014 and $53 million for another 600 acres on Kauai’s North Shore in 2021.

In December 2023, Wired reported that Zuckerberg was building a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter, complete with its own supplies of energy and food, at his Ko’olau Ranch property. The final bill after tallying up building permits and land will be about $270 million, the magazine reported.

Wired reported the Kauai compound would feature two mansions linked by a tunnel that also connects to the shelter, which would have “living space, a mechanical room, and an escape hatch that can be accessed via a ladder,” as well as a sturdy metal door filled with concrete.

Brandi Hoffine Barr, a spokesperson for Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, declined to comment to Wired at the time regarding the size or features of the underground structure.

Local news outlet Hawaii News Now reported in December that it had obtained county planning documents showing an underground “storm shelter” measuring nearly 4,500 square feet on his property, roughly the size of an NBA basketball court.

In a December Bloomberg interview, Zuckerberg equated the bunker to “a basement” or “a little shelter.”

“There’s just a bunch of storage space and like, I don’t know, whatever you want to call it, a hurricane shelter or whatever,” he said. “I think it got blown out of proportion as if the whole ranch was some kind of Doomsday bunker, which is just not true.”

Zuckerberg posted a video on Instagram in January 2024 poking fun at the discourse surrounding his property, saying, “When your wife catches you in the ‘bunker’ playing video games.” The clip shows Chan walking into a keypad-operated room resembling a home movie theater where Zuckerberg is seen gaming with friends on a massive screen.

Zuckerberg has also posted on Instagram about starting cattle ranching on the property.

“Started raising cattle at Ko’olau Ranch on Kauai, and my goal is to create some of the highest quality beef in the world,” he wrote in January 2024. “The cattle are wagyu and angus, and they’ll grow up eating macadamia meal and drinking beer that we grow and produce here on the ranch.”

The following month, he said that he was “not trying to do this commercially” and was “just trying to create the highest-quality stuff we can.” He also explained the reasoning behind the cows’ diet of macadamia nuts and beer.

“As a human, what do you think is the thing that basically you just sit and eat a lot? It’s like beer and nuts, basically. Nuts, super dense. Beer induces appetite, which I think people are familiar with.”

He added that he wanted to feed the cows the “densest, most nutritious” food so they would gain weight and “be the most delicious cows.”

In addition to cattle ranching, the land would include “organic ginger and turmeric farms, a nursery dedicated to native plant restoration, and partnering with Kauai’s foremost wildlife conservation experts to protect native birds and other endangered or threatened wildlife populations,” a spokesperson for Zuckerberg and Chan told Business Insider.

“Mark and Priscilla value the time their family spends at Ko’olau Ranch and in the local community and are committed to preserving the ranch’s natural beauty,” the spokesperson said. “When they acquired the property, they rescinded an existing agreement that would have allowed for portions of the property to be divided into 80 luxury homes. Under their care, less than 1% of the overall land is developed with the vast majority dedicated to farming, ranching, conservation, open spaces, and wildlife preservation.”