Hawaii
Tropical vacation accident kills chef who worked at Michelin-starred restaurant
An acclaimed pastry chef was killed by a boulder during a picturesque hike on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, officials said.
Gianna Buzzetta, a 26-year-old from California, was hit by a falling boulder on March 23 as she was exploring the Makaleha Falls in Kauai with her boyfriend, Connor Quinton, the Kauai Fire Department said.
“They heard a really loud noise. [Quinton] looked up, but couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming from,” her dad, Sal Buzzettta, told 10News.
“Within a second, it happened … The rock dislodged from quite a ways up … then it landed on her,” he said.
NEVADA GIRL, 7, KILLED IN LAKE TAHOE SKI RESORT BOULDER ACCIDENT: POLICE
Gianna Buzzetta, 26, was hit by a falling boulder on March 23 as she was exploring the Makaleha Falls waterfall in Kauai with her boyfriend, Connor Quinton. (Buzzetta family)
Due to the remote location, there was no cell service, and Quinton sprinted to find help. According to the Kauai Fire Department, when first responders arrived, they found Buzzetta unconscious at the base of the falls, with labored breathing and heavy bleeding from an apparent head wound.
The chef needed to be airlifted to a local hospital, where she was later declared dead.
Caty Buzzetta, Gianna’s mother, said that Quinton was fulfilling her daughter’s lifelong dream to hike the 5.2-mile round trip hike to the cascading waterfall.
“She had told her boyfriend, Connor, that day, he had fulfilled her dreams, and it was the best day of her life,” Caty Buzzetta told KGTV.
The couple was set to get engaged and start a life together prior to the freak accident, her parents shared.
Gianna Buzzetta, 26, was a rising star at a Michelin restaurant in California. She worked as a pastry chef there. (JEUNE ET JOLIE/Instagram)
Buzzetta was a pastry chef at Michelin-starred French restaurant Jeune et Jolie, in Carlsbad, California. According to an online fundraiser, Buzzetta helped the restaurant achieve three Michelin stars over the years.
VACATION ABROAD TURNS TRAGIC FOR AMERICAN NURSE AFTER ACCIDENT LEAVES HER ‘ALL METAL’
“She was a huge part of the team. Super creative, super talented, incredibly hardworking,” her boss, John Resnick, told Fox 5 San Diego. “Humble, confident — I mean all these things that we want to see in the people we work with. So from that professional talent standpoint, she was incredible… Our whole team loved working alongside her.”
Gianna Buzzetta’s boss, John Resnick, shared how the 26-year-old’s work ethic and talent helped the team work towards success. (John Resnick/Instagram)
In a post on their Instagram page, Jeune et Jolie announced that it is raising funds for Buzzetta’s family by providing a special dinner service.
“Gianna was our former Pastry Chef, and our friend. She brought such joy, intensity, passion and love to this restaurant and to our team,” the restaurant’s team wrote. “Her sudden loss leaves all of us heartbroken, and searching for ways to be of help to her family.”
“And so, we are doing the one thing we know how to do. We are coming together as a restaurant, and welcoming guests in to celebrate the relationships that give our lives meaning,” they said.
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Fox News Digital has reached out to Jeune et Jolie for comment.
Hawaii
2026 Hawaii (HHSAA) High School Baseball Playoffs: Brackets, Schedules – May 6
The 2026 Hawaii high school baseball playoffs begin on May 6th with the opening round in the Division I bracket, with the Division II bracket starting May 7th.
High School On SI has brackets for every classification and division in the Hawaii high school baseball playoffs.
The 2026 HHSAA state championship games will be on May 9th.
2026 Hawaii High School Baseball Division I Playoff Bracket, Schedule, Scores (HHSAA) – May 4, 2026
Matchups are as follows:
Pearl City vs. Moanalua
Pac-Five vs. Kaiser
King Kekaulike vs. Hilo
Kamehameha Hawai’i vs. Kailua
2026 Hawaii High School Baseball Division II Playoff Bracket, Schedule, Scores (HHSAA) – May 4, 2026
Matchups are as follows:
Waipahu vs. Hawaii Prep
Seabury Hall vs. Damien
Honoka’a vs. Castle
Kauai vs. Kapolei
More Coverage from High School On SI
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Hawaii
Hawaii County Surf Forecast for May 04, 2026 | Big Island Now
Forecast for Big Island Windward and Southeast
| Shores | Tonight | Monday | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Surf | Surf | |||
| PM | AM | AM | PM | |
| North Facing | 1-3 | 1-3 | 1-3 | 1-3 |
| East Facing | 4-6 | 4-6 | 4-6 | 3-5 |
| South Facing | 3-5 | 3-5 | 3-5 | 2-4 |
| Weather | Mostly cloudy. Occasional showers. | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low Temperature | In the upper 60s. | ||||||
| Winds | North winds 5 to 10 mph. | ||||||
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| Weather | Partly sunny. Scattered showers. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High Temperature | Around 80. | |||||
| Winds | Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. | |||||
|
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| Sunrise | 5:49 AM HST. | |||||
| Sunset | 6:45 PM HST. | |||||
Forecast for Big Island Leeward
| Shores | Tonight | Monday | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Surf | Surf | |||
| PM | AM | AM | PM | |
| West Facing | 2-4 | 2-4 | 2-4 | 1-3 |
| South Facing | 3-5 | 3-5 | 3-5 | 2-4 |
| Weather | Mostly cloudy until 12 AM, then partly cloudy. Scattered showers. |
||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low Temperature | In the lower 70s. | ||||||||||
| Winds | Southwest winds around 5 mph, becoming east in the evening, then becoming light and variable after midnight. |
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|
|||||||||||
| Weather | Mostly sunny. Isolated showers. | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High Temperature | In the mid 80s. | |||||||
| Winds | Southwest winds around 5 mph. | |||||||
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| Sunrise | 5:53 AM HST. | |||||||
| Sunset | 6:49 PM HST. | |||||||
The current small northwest swell will decline tonight. A moderate northwest swell will build on Monday and produce surf above seasonal average during the peak Monday night and early Tuesday. This swell will slowly decline late Tuesday and Wednesday. A larger northwest swell could produce surf near the High Surf Advisory level Thursday, then lower Friday into next weekend.
A south-southwest swell will produce surf around seasonal average tonight and will gradually decrease Monday and Tuesday, with mainly small background surf along south facing shores through the rest of the week.
Trade wind swell will slowly lower below seasonal average on Monday and will remain small through the remainder of the week.
NORTH EAST
am
pm
Surf: Minimal (ankle high or less) surf.
Conditions: Semi choppy with ESE winds 5-10mph in the morning increasing to 10-15mph in the afternoon.
NORTH WEST
am
pm
Surf: Minimal (ankle high or less) surf.
Conditions: Clean in the morning with ESE winds less than 5mph. Bumpy/semi bumpy conditions for the afternoon with the winds shifting W 5-10mph.
WEST
am
pm
Surf: Minimal (ankle high or less) surf.
Conditions: Light sideshore texture in the morning with NNW winds 5-10mph. Bumpy/semi bumpy conditions for the afternoon with the winds shifting to the WNW.
SOUTH EAST
am
pm
Surf: Minimal (ankle high or less) surf.
Conditions: Sideshore texture/chop with NE winds 10-15mph.
Data Courtesy of NOAA.gov and SwellInfo.com
Hawaii
Hawaiian Airlines Is Gone. Travelers Just Lost The Airline That Knew Hawaii Best.
Hawaiian Airlines ended as an independently functioning airline on April 22, but what it built didn’t end with it. The parts that, in hindsight, made Hawaiian feel ahead of everyone else are the same ones Alaska is now stepping into and scaling.
Just days before the flight code disappears, it is easier to see the shape of what Hawaiian actually was. It was not just the airline that could not make the numbers work; it was the airline that kept getting the future right earlier than almost everyone else around it.
Hawaiian Airlines saw premium differently.
Beat of Hawaii editors have both been flying the Pacific on Hawaiian for nearly a half-century. And we saw it at (mostly its best) firsthand, on the second-to-last HA1 from Los Angeles to Honolulu. The 787 was not trying to copy what other U.S. carriers were doing. It was trying to reset expectations entirely, and for a regional Hawaii airline, that meant more than it would have anywhere else. Hawaiian repeatedly won top-rated U.S. airline recognition year after year, for operational performance and service.
The Adient Ascent business class suites we experienced were one example. Hawaiian backed it early, before any other U.S. airlines had committed to something comparable. At the time, that looked like a risk for a carrier already on borrowed time and with little room for error. Now it looks like it was a blueprint.
Alaska’s new international business class uses the exact same business-class platform. The headlines now belong to Alaska, but the decision to believe in that suite, when it was still unproven, belongs exclusively to Hawaiian Airlines.
Hawaiian largely built a product that reflected the emotional aspects of Hawaii flights. TEAGUE designed the interior around Hawaii, with Polynesian navigation references overhead in the ceiling, Hawaiian touches throughout, and materials tied directly to the place in a way no U.S. airline even attempts. The seat, the layout, the feel of the cabin all reflected that, in some ways at least, perfectly.
We covered that in detail in Hawaiian Airlines Dreamliner First Class Review. When the Dreamliner arrived, nothing about that experience felt like a legacy airline barely holding on. It felt like something big, maybe just getting started.
Hawaiian moved first on what travelers actually use.
Before most U.S. airlines could stabilize their hodgepodge of largely poor-quality, expensive WiFi deployments, Hawaiian moved to Starlink across its fleet, putting very fast, free connectivity on all its trans-Pacific A330S and A321neos. It simply worked from gate to gate. No falderal, no log-in, no loyalty program or credit card.
Note: Unfortunately, Hawaiian was never able to achieve WiFi certification on its Dreamliners, and Alaska is just now in the process of obtaining that.
Starlink WiFi was not a small upgrade. It changed how Hawaii flights felt, especially for travelers who were used to paying for something slow or unreliable, if it existed at all. We cannot tell you how many times we’ve flown with other airlines that promised WiFi to and from Hawaii, only to find it didn’t work or didn’t work well. Hawaiian made the right call early, and it made it across two aircraft fleets already in service, not just on new plane deliveries.
Hawaiian identified the parts of the experience that travelers actually cared about, and it moved before anyone else did. Alaska now inherits that advantage. It does not have to explain why it counts or prove that it works, since all that came and went. Hawaiian already did its part, as have others since. Alaska has also decided to deploy Starlink WiFi across its entire network that BOH editors enjoyed on a brand new Alaska 737 MAX 8 about a week ago.
Hawaiian built a brand that traveled well: Pualani.
For decades, Hawaiian showed up in Australia, Japan, Korea, and New York City (pictured) with something that already had great meaning. And that too was not an accident, nor is it easy to replicate.
The Pualani brand was consistent. The identity was tied to our iconic home in a way that translated well internationally, especially in Japan, where airline brand perception still carries weight in purchasing decisions. Travelers were not just choosing a seat or a fare. They were choosing what the airline represented.
A national branding study ranked Hawaiian first among U.S. airlines for brand effectiveness, with a score of 123 out of 200 for logo recognition, brand attribution, and consistency. Alaska scored 74 and ranked ninth. We covered that gap about Hawaiian’s reach in How Hawaiian Airlines Pualani Branding Took Aloha Global. The difference was clearly not about marketing budgets. It was about what the brand stands for when it enters a market far from home.
We have previously explored what happened to that identity. The answer is not simple, and it is not finished. Alaska can keep parts, but it can never recreate the conditions that originally built it.
Hawaiian reached further than it was capable of.
Hawaiian ordered the 787 with plans that extended well beyond Asia, including potentially London and Singapore. It also kept flying routes that did not earn their keep and never figured out how to price its product the way the rest of the industry had learned to.
What it did not have was the corporate financial structure to keep it working when conditions tightened the way they did, and its ambitions outran the balance sheet years before Alaska ever stepped in.
The failure was not Hawaiian’s vision.
That part has already been told, and it does not need to be repeated here. We covered it in Why Hawaiian Airlines Failed: A Story of Planes, Promises, And Pride.
The timing, the cost structure, and the other breakdowns, both COVID-related and around the Saber-to-Amadeus migration in 2023, and other events, all seemed to come crashing down at once.
The leadership payouts that followed only sharpened the contrast. Peter Ingram at $13.2 million, Shannon Okinaka at $4.9 million, Jonathan Snook at $5.4 million, and Aaron Alter at $4.2 million. Those numbers landed hard with many when the airline itself couldn’t remain viable.
Hawaiian needed Alaska. This was not a strategic pairing of equals, as it was once called; it was a rescue.
Alaska gets the part Hawaiian could not finish.
Alaska inherits the aircraft decisions, product direction, connectivity upgrades, and early bets Hawaiian made when it still had room to maneuver. It gets to scale them across a far larger network, and with its stronger financial base.
It also inherits the harder question. What happens to the parts of Hawaiian that were not just operational decisions, but identity?
What Hawaii loses is harder to measure for residents and kamaaina.
Hawaiian was never the biggest airline serving the islands, nor the most profitable or efficient. What it was, for a long time, was the airline that understood uniquely what a Hawaii flight was supposed to feel like.
That was demonstrated in small ways and big ones. It showed up in how the cabin felt when you boarded, the unique Hawaii-based service provided, in how the brand translated overseas, in the decisions that put traveler experience ahead of short-term gain, and even good sense.
Those choices didn’t keep the airline alive. But they shaped what the airline became and what Alaska now has to work with. Hawaiian did not survive as an independent airline, and it did not disappear, exactly.
What does Hawaiian’s legacy mean to you now that the airline itself is no longer on its own, and does seeing Alaska build on what Hawaiian started change how you look at either one?
Lead Photo © Beat of Hawaii attending the inaugural HNL-JFK route celebration in New York City at Grand Central Station.
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