Good Samaritan certainly wasn’t treated like one

By Richard Palmer - Tribune-Herald

A Mountain View man who aided two visitors trapped by the fire at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park nine days ago is still smarting from the treatment he received from a park ranger.
While the ranger was solicitous for the welfare of Sandy and Terry Nelson, their rescuer — 35-year-old Arthur Vinhaca — says he was initially treated as though he’d done something wrong.
The park’s chief ranger maintains that in the chaos and tension following the fire’s discovery, all park personnel were on heightened alert and everyone was being asked to account for their presence.
Regardless, on this everyone agrees: The Nelsons were headed toward danger Friday afternoon when they encountered Vinhaca a few miles up Mauna Loa Strip Road.
Vinhaca said he spends most afternoons hiking through the area. His wife, Gail, said she typically drops her husband off at the end of Ihope Road north of Glenwood, and picks him up several hours later at Bird Park along Mauna Loa Strip Road. That’s what she’d done on June 30, she said.
As Vinhaca trekked through the wilderness, a park service crew ahead of him was trimming brush along the park’s boundary fence. Investigators would later determine that something in the crew’s wake smoldered and burst into flames shortly before 2 p.m. near the Volcano Winery.
Vinhaca says the Nelsons were driving down Mauna Loa Road when they caught up to him a mile or two from Bird Park. They ventured ahead — until they were greeted by flames pushing west and southwest.
The Nelsons were ready to keep driving and risk the flames — a move that would have been risky at best. Instead, Vinhaca persuaded the couple to drive back up the mountain, park, and let him guide them around the fire.
Vinhaca — wearing military-style fatigues, heavy boots and carrying plenty of water, a first aid kit, compass, rain gear and more — was equipped for anything he might encounter. The husband and wife were wearing shorts, said Vinhaca, and the wife had lightweight footwear unsuited to the terrain.
After two hours of strenuous hiking, the trio emerged at the Volcano Golf Course. Though the Nelsons were tired and hungry, “they kept their sense of humor,” Vinhaca said.
Some firefighters and park maintenance personnel were gathered at the golf course, and a ranger quickly arrived. Vinhaca said the ranger offered water, food and a ride to the California couple — but made no such offer to the Mountain View man.
Instead, Vinhaca said, he was asked what he’d been doing in the park, ordered to place his hands on the ranger’s car, and was searched.
Vinhaca believes he was treated differently because of the way he was dressed, and because he is a local.
“That’s his perception,” Chief Ranger Paul Ducasse said Thursday.
“This was just hours after the fire had started,” said Ducasse, “and it had every indication of an arson start. The (Nelsons) could explain what they were doing. He could not properly explain what he was doing.” And, Ducasse added, “people don’t normally hike in full camouflage gear.”
Ducasse, who did not witness the incident, said the ranger “did the right thing, given the circumstances.”
Vinhaca has “tried to make it a racial thing; it’s not a racial thing,” said Ducasse. “The ranger is local, just like (Vinhaca) is local. You stand ‘em side by side, and you’d say, yeah, they’re both local.”
Once he’d been searched and the ranger found no contraband, Vinhaca, like the Nelsons, was given a ride. On the road from the golf course, they met up with Gail Vinhaca, who’d been driving up and down Highway 11 looking for her husband.
She admits she was worried, but was confident in her husband’s knowledge of the forest. “I was ready to give him at least the night,” she said, “Then I would have called out the cavalry.”
Though glad he was able to help the Nelsons, Vinhaca said he was sufficiently bothered by the ranger’s treatment to register a complaint with park officials.
The park service has since acknowledged Vinhaca’s role in guiding the Nelsons to safety. In a July 1 letter to Vinhaca, Ducasse praised the man for becoming a good Samaritan.
“Your decision to persuade the Nelsons not to attempt to drive through the fire was the correct decision,” the letter reads. “By your actions, you most likely averted an unfortunate situation. You are to be commended for your quick thinking and swift actions.”

Hawaii Tribune

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