This is out of order for the vacation diary, but a couple things have happened that are really upsetting, and I can’t put them off. In preparation for our trip to Kaua’i, I made a post on this site asking for recommendations for a helicopter touring company because I was concerned about safety. Dallas and his family would hear about helicopter crashes every year or so in Kaua’i and all had recommended against doing it, but we decided to anyway. Jeannette and Yvan recommended Inter-Island Helicopters to us. They looked reputable and were often involved in search-and-rescue missions and with putting out fires and stuff like that, so I booked a tour for me, Allison, Susan and John.

Last Monday, we went on the helicopter ride (I’ll have photos later). It was the scariest thing I’d ever done, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The views were phenomenal and we saw things we’d never see any other way. We all had a really great time. Our pilot Donald was a local guy. It came up in conversation that Dallas is from Waimea and Donald asked how old he is. I told him that Dallas is 30 and Donald said “that’s my age” but he wasn’t sure if they knew each other. Donald went to Waimea High, but Dallas went to Kamehameha on Oahu. Later on, when looking at the photos, Dallas said he didn’t recognize him. Anyway, because we had a local connection and some of us had been to Kaua’i before, Donald was really fun and personable and jokey with us. It helped make the experience even more great.

On Thursday we were in Oahu and watching the news when we heard that a helicopter crashed on Kaua’i that day. It was another company, but it was still pretty upsetting. I know that millions of people ride those helicopters between crashes but that the crashes make big news in the islands and maybe people are more scared than they should be.. but it was still too close for comfort. Just thinking about how all the people who were killed were on these brilliant vacations and how that all came to a tragic end. Plus the pilot was really experienced and couldn’t do anything. It was a hydraulic failure that caused the crash.

So now today, we’re back in Chicago and Dallas IMed me this morning. There was another crash yesterday. As I read the article my heart started racing. This crash was with the same company we flew with, Inter-Island Helicopters. And even more, not all of Inter-Island’s helicopters are the same and the crashed helicopter looked just like the one we flew in. And then I read it: The pilot was Donald. The Honolulu Advertiser wrote: “Helicopter pilot Donald Torres, a 30-year-old new father and local boy from Hanapepe, by all accounts did a heroic job yesterday of guiding an out-of-control helicopter with its tail rotor ripped off to the only open patch of ground in the Ha’ena area.” I had to rush off to a meeting, and the entire time in there I was freaking out. It was only after I got back to my desk that I realized that Donald is still alive at Wilcox Memorial Hospital. I felt a big relief that someone we’d just met hadn’t been killed, but still so much anxiety about the whole situation. The crash wasn’t Donald’s fault, it seems, and I think he did as well as he could to land the helicopter safely, even though one of his four passengers died as a result of the crash.

On our vacation, the helicopter ride was one of the best things ever, I’m not going to lie, but I don’t know now if it’s worth all the worry. Nothing against Donald or Inter-Island Helicopters, who are often called upon by Kaua’i officials to help in search-and-rescue missions, but I don’t think I’ll be doing a helicopter tour ever again!

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