Nestled in the hills of Laupahoehoe, overlooking the blue waters off the Hamakua Coast sits the Magical Creatures Sanctuary — home to over 100 abandoned, neglected and medically challenged farm animals.

Established in 2018, many of the nonprofit sanctuary’s first residents were rescued from the Kilauea eruption after being left behind as people fled during the evacuation. Now nearly a decade later, the sanctuary is committed to continuing to provide care for these animals while also increasing educational initiatives and playing a more active role in the local community.

Jill Vanderhoef, a previous volunteer at the sanctuary, recently took over as executive director from founder Helena Lundblad, who is transitioning to a more administrative role.

Vanderhoef, who has a degree in economics and management from St. Andrew’s University, is spearheading new initiatives and growth efforts as well as working to ensure the organization’s financial viability. Until recently, the organization was entirely reliant on volunteers.

“When I got involved, I saw that we needed to kind of shift gears. … If we want to really do more and not just barely make ends meet, we need to start developing more programming,” she said. “And unfortunately, or fortunately, you have to — if you want to have a sustainable sanctuary — you have to run it as a business.”

This includes plans to ramp up the sanctuary’s existing tour program as well as create educational opportunities for local students to interact with the animals.

MCS is one of only two accredited sanctuaries on the island, and the only one dedicated to farmed animals. Vanderhoef said its services are especially needed due to the abundance of feral goats, sheep and pigs.

“These animals were brought here by humans. So, the overpopulation of pigs and goats, and all of these things, this is a human-made problem. And we feel compelled to address that to the best of our ability, because they didn’t ask for this, and they don’t have predators here,” she said. “So, it’s just the nature of being on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that’s incredibly remote. The challenges for a sanctuary here are unlike anything on the mainland.”

Sanctuary Manager Gracie Atwell said the site is currently at max capacity, but there is still demand and frequent requests for its services.

“We get calls pretty much every day about animals on the island,” she said. “It’s neglect cases, it’s natural disasters, it’s just people wanting to surrender their animals that can’t take care of their animals.”

She and Vanderhoef said turning down animals is one of the hardest parts of the job, but currently necessary to be able to care for their residents with existing resources.

“When we say yes to taking in a resident, we’re not just saying, ‘OK, we’ll take this animal out of its like current situation.’ We’re saying we will feed them every single morning, every single night, until the day they pass. We will give them the hopefully most peaceful passing that we can,” Vanderhoef said.

“We will always look out for their well-being, get to know them as an individual, to figure out their likes, dislikes, making sure that they’re comfortable. It really is so much more than just that initial rescue.”

While Atwell and Vanderhoef are now full-time employees with paid positions, MCS still depends on volunteers, primarily coming from off the island, for animal care and daily operations. Vanderhoef is hoping to change this through new programs, funding models and community engagement.

“The goal for us is to develop our tour program, so we can connect more humans with animals, and they can form those relationships for themselves. But also to be able to get exposure, so we can expand, and that means hiring local people … .” she said. “There’s so much opportunity here if we can stabilize and start bringing in money to do these things then hopefully be a powerful force in the community… doing so much more than animal care.”

To get involved or donate to the sanctuary, visit www.magicalcreaturessanctuary.org.

Email Grace Inez Adams at grace.adams@hawaiitribune-herald.com.

If point guard JJ Mandaquit’s job at Arizona next season looks tricky and challenging, having to glue together a lineup full of potential NBA draft picks under the pressure of playing for a returning Final Four team, it might be worth considering what his grandfather and father have been up to.

They’ve been running a roofing company … in Hilo, Hawaii. The rainiest city in the country, on the windward side of the Big Island. Where some 130 inches of rain hit buildings every year, creating slick working conditions, and where, even in drier moments, there’s high humidity and trade winds to deal with.

“I had to go on the roof a couple of times,” Mandaquit said, chuckling. “But not in the rain.”

He had other things to do. With his basketball skills overshadowing the local level of play since his elementary school years, Mandaquit left Hilo as a sixth-grader to begin a higher-level basketball journey that put him in Tucson this year.

His family came with him to Oahu, where he transferred to the Iolani School of Honolulu. His father, Jason Sr., commuted back and forth between Oahu and the Big Island while still roofing, though his mother was able to transfer from Hilo to Honolulu within her job at Hawaiian Electric.

Everyone thought that was the plan for a while.

“It was a better opportunity, better education and more opportunity,” Mandaquit said. “When we left from Big Island to Oahu, that was a huge move for my family, a lot of sacrifice that went into it. I’m super grateful to my parents. When we made that move in the sixth grade, we thought that was going to be the move, that it was just going to end there, I’d go to high school there.”

It still wasn’t enough. Mandaquit outgrew the basketball scene again. By ninth grade, he moved on to Real Salt Lake Academy, which turned into Utah Prep.

In Hawaii, he found players have also been kept from high-profile West Coast clubs because of a quirky club-ball residency rule in which players are typically allowed to play only for a club in their state or a bordering one — and Hawaii borders only an ocean. So Mandaquit said he and other locals started their own “Sons of Hawaii” club to play on the “MADE Hoops” circuit.

It still wasn’t enough. Utah was next.

“We felt it was best to get out of Hawaii and chase this dream,” Mandaquit said. “It wasn’t an easy choice to leave home, but we felt looking at the big picture, if I want to play at the high Division I level, we almost felt that it was a necessity to get out of the islands, surround myself with better competition, be somewhere that allows me to be more exposed.”

That move paid off. Mandaquit grew into a high-major prospect at Utah Prep and became a mainstay with USA Basketball junior teams. He won three gold medals at FIBA events: At the 2023 U16 AmeriCup, the 2024 U17 World Cup and, on a team led by UA coach Tommy Lloyd, the 2025 U19 World Cup.

Only a secondary recruiting target of Arizona’s before he committed to Washington in November 2024, Mandaquit jumped out at Lloyd while playing for USA Basketball last summer. Mandaquit averaged 6.1 points and 5.4 assists — with nearly a 4-to-1 assist-turnover ratio — while hitting 6 of 10 3-pointers over USA’s seven-game romp.

“I had only seen him play a few times before (last summer), but I was just so impressed with his character, but also his tenacity and the effort he played with. Just how he impacted winning,” Lloyd said. “So obviously, when we saw his name on the transfer portal, it piqued my interest right away.”

Lloyd said he considered Mandaquit out of high school, but the Wildcats were also pursuing Brayden Burries and had Jaden Bradley projected to stay through last season. Lloyd said he also took a cautious recruiting approach in 2025 because “you just didn’t know” how rev-share and NIL were going to work out, since 2025-26 was the first year schools could pay players.

So Mandaquit chose the Huskies over USC and Creighton. He started the Huskies’ first five games but wound up playing off the bench for most of his 22 appearances, averaging 5.2 points and 2.1 rebounds while shooting 28.2% from 3-point range.

Mandaquit struggled with a foot issue in the preseason and eventually missed the Huskies’ last 11 games because of it, though he has since had corrective surgery and returned to the court at Arizona.

“It was a great learning experience,” Mandaquit said of Washington. “I didn’t have the year that I wanted to have, but just going through that experience is gonna be huge for me and my future. I’ve got one year of college basketball under my belt, and the Big Ten was awesome last year.”

After he left Seattle, SI’s Huskies website wrote that UW coach Danny Sprinkle “has to be reeling by Mandaquit’s departure,” saying Mandaquit’s playing style “seemed to match Sprinkle’s hard-nosed personality.”

Instead, Mandaquit will be playing for the same coach he said he loved playing under last summer in Switzerland. Mandaquit joined a team that included former UA forward Koa Peat, incoming UA freshman Caleb Holt and No. 1 NBA Draft pick A.J. Dybantsa, among others.

They were all stars, forced together to play team ball during the world’s highest-profile junior tournament.

Gold was the expectation. 

“What he was able to do with our group in such a short amount of time, I just loved,” Mandaquit said of Lloyd. It was “just the culture that he was able to build. Obviously, it’s not the easiest job as a coach to be able to manage all of the star players and egos that we had. It was just the way that he was able to get everyone to just buy in and focus on a common goal, and ultimately go and reach that goal.

“It was amazing. It was the most fun I ever had playing basketball.”

Despite their bond, Mandaquit said he couldn’t have a recruiting conversation with Lloyd until after he entered the portal this spring. But that might have been a formality anyway.

Both Lloyd and Mandaquit knew plenty about each other at that point.

“This time it was fast,” Lloyd said. “We both knew what we wanted on both sides.”

Lloyd needed a true point guard to join North Carolina transfer Derek Dixon and Holt in a reloaded backcourt that lost NBA Draft picks in Burries and Bradley.

Mandaquit wanted to be under Lloyd for more than a few weeks.

Official elapsed time between Mandaquit’s early April entry into the transfer portal and his commitment to Arizona: Ten days.

“When this opportunity came back around, I couldn’t pass it up,” Mandaquit said. “I knew this is the place that I wanted to be, and I knew I wanted to be coached by Tommy.”

During an interview at McKale Center last month, Mandaquit said he’s since arrived at Arizona to find high-character guys around him, and that coaches are pushing him the way he wants to be pushed.

“I’m loving it so far,” Mandaquit said.

As a bonus, Mandaquit’s first season with the Wildcats will also take him nearly full circle. Not to Hilo and the Big Island, but to the Maui Invitational, the prestigious early-season event that Mandaquit said he routinely watched on television even if the inter-island hop and high ticket prices kept him out of the Lahaina Civic Center to watch in person.

This time, he’ll be in the building — and soaking up the atmosphere outside it. His parents, now living back in Hilo, can make the easy flight over to watch, too.

It probably won’t rain much, if at all, Lahaina being on the leeward side of Maui and all.

But, for Mandaquit, it’s still home.

“Hawaii means everything to me,” Mandaquit said. “I try to get back there as much as possible, and I feel the support of the state behind me. I feel their love, so it pushes me to work harder.”