Before Ryan Wesley Routh allegedly became the second man to try and kill Donald Trump in as many months, he was something else entirely: A fiend on the pickleball court.

“He was a reasonably good player. He played really hard,” Bryant Schultz told The Daily Beast in a phone interview. “He was the only one out at the courts who would dive for the ball. Most pickleball players do not dive to make a shot.”

Schultz, 62, of Kaneohe, Oahu, played frequently with Routh, 58, over a period of several years as part of a loose coalition of residents who showed up at Swanzy Beach Park three mornings a week to get their pickleball on.

Both on and off the court, Routh was “always personable and good-natured,” Schultz said, as well as chatty, on friendly terms with many of the park’s regulars. Hard on himself when he made mistakes, he never chastised his partners. “Except for his own errors, he was the most mild-mannered player out there.”

Routh first appeared at the park after the worst of the pandemic had passed, Schultz recalled. “He never appeared to have a bunch of money,” he said. “He was often borrowing paddles. For quite a while, he played with a really chewed-up wooden paddle—because of his dive, you know.”

During a federal court appearance on Monday, Routh was charged with two firearm possession counts. He told the court that he had “zero funds” in savings and had no assets beyond two trucks in Hawaii, according to CNN.

It wasn’t totally clear to his teammates what Routh did for a living. Schultz heard that he “worked on building tiny houses” and would do odd-job repairs around the community, including on a local pier. “He wasn’t paid or contracted,” as far as Schultz knew, he said. “He just went out and made the surface safe for people to walk on.”

On his LinkedIn page, which remained live on Monday, Routh advertised his work with a company called Camp Box Honolulu, which he wrote builds storage units and “very simple housing structures for the less fortunate.” In 2019, a year after Routh moved to Oahu, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that he’d pledged to build tiny homes for Kalaeloa’s homeless community.

One thing Routh didn’t appear to be—at least on the pickleball court—was political.

“I can’t recall him ever talking politics,” Schultz said. He’d had no idea Routh had self-published a 291-page book last year in which he called for Trump’s assassination, criticizing the former president for his 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. (Authorities have not yet laid out a possible motive in Sunday’s assassination attempt.)

In a section apparently directed at Iran’s government, Routh wrote, “You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment and the dismantling of the deal,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “No one here in the US seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection.”

Routh has a scattered political history tracing back to his time in his native North Carolina, where he registered as an “unaffiliated” voter in 2012. In his book, he groused that he was “so tired of people asking me if I am a Democrat or Republican as I refuse to be put in a category and I must always answer independent.”

On social media, he had professed support for Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, President Joe Biden, and Trump, whom he disavowed in mid-2020.

“I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving…” he tweeted that June. “I will be glad when you gone.”

Schultz and his fellow picklers were aware, however, that Routh left Hawaii for Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion, intent on fighting for Kyiv.

With no military experience and a lengthy criminal record, however, Routh was rebuffed by the Ukrainian defense ministry, he told Newsweek Romania in an article recently unearthed by CBS News.

“My initial goal was to come fight… but I’m 56, so initially they were like, I have no military experience, so they were like, you’re not an ideal candidate,” he told the magazine. “So they said, not right this minute. So plan B was to come here to Kyiv and promote getting more people here.”

Routh spent some time in the city trying to act as an informal recruiter for Ukraine’s International Legion, and spoke to both The New York Times and Semafor last year about his efforts. But several foreign soldiers involved with the legion told Slate on Sunday night that Routh “was not associated with them, recruited nobody to the cause, and did little during his time in Ukraine aside from garner publicity for himself.”

In a statement to NBC News, a spokesperson for the legion said, “We would like to clarify that Ryan Wesley Routh has never been part of, associated with, or linked to the International Legion in any capacity. Any claims or suggestions indicating otherwise are entirely inaccurate.”

After failing in his recruitment efforts, Routh eventually made his way back to Hawaii, where he took up pickleball again. The last time Schultz saw him was around four or five weeks before the assassination attempt, he said. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary; it was just another day on the court.

Hawaii County officials are ready to begin a nearly $18 million project to reconstruct a 3.64-mile section of Highway 137 that was claimed by lava from the 2018 Kilauea Volcano eruption in lower Puna.

Department of Public Works officials said Tuesday that a contract was awarded to Isemoto Contracting Co., which received the official notice to proceed on June 24. The section of Highway 137 is between the makai end of Pohoiki Road and the intersection of Highway 132, an area also known as Four Corners.

The price tag for the project to rehabilitate the county road is $17.8 million. The lion’s share, $13.35 million, will be funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, while the county will kick in $4.45 million.

“You know, the day has finally come,” said Puna Council member Ashley Kier­kiewicz. “We’ve been provided timelines that kept getting extended and extended, and it almost felt as if the project was never going to happen. I think the project has just become real for the community, because we’re finally going to get started.”

The work includes grading the existing lava rock, installing a new asphalt-concrete pavement structure, removing and replacing asphalt in areas unaffected by lava, and installing a new 6-inch waterline. The project includes 3.4 miles of new road and 0.24 miles of repaving the asphalt surface with asphalt-concrete aggregate.

Surveying of the area is already underway, according to DPW. On-site construction is set to begin at the end of this month, with an anticipated completion date of March 2026.

“It’s all a part of connectivity and getting Puna back to where it was prior to the 2018 lava flow,” said state Sen. Joy San Buenaventura of Puna. “It’s a huge milestone, especially since we’re talking about six years later. And kudos to the county for being able to finally get it done.”

The new road, when finished, will reconnect Kapoho Vacationland subdivision — which was all but wiped out by the eruption — with Highway 132, which runs from Four Corners to Pahoa.

A few homes and other buildings remain standing in the isolated subdivision, and Deb Smith, president of Vacationland Hawaii Community Association, called the pending road rehabilitation “huge.”

“We’ve been living out here full-time, hiking in and out from Four Corners,” Smith said. “We’re not getting any younger. I’m 69, and my husband’s 70, and we’ve been hiking in and out — about a mile-and-a-half to Four Corners.

“We can’t wait to actually drive home. Six years is a long time to wait for access. We’re really ready to begin our recovery. We’ve been in limbo for six years.”

Smith said once the drive home occurs, the real work for her and the community begins.

“Once 137 gets opened, we still have to do our subdivision roads. For us, getting 137 is just the first step,” she said. “We lost every inch of subdivision roads. So, we have 7 miles of subdivision roads to recover.”

DPW is hosting a Hawaiian blessing ceremony for the project at 10 a.m. on Sept. 24 at Four Corners, which will be open to the public.

“To have the blessing ceremony announced is a significant milestone for the community,” Kierkiewicz said. “It’s going to be a celebration. We felt strongly about ensuring that we’re incorporating culture, so there will be pule and a blessing.”