From Hawaiʻi to the World: Mahalo to PAAC's Class of 2026
There's a moment in Julie Matsumoto's PAAC story that she keeps coming back to. She's standing inside the U.S. Embassy in Manila, asking questions of a diplomat, and something shifts. Before PAAC, she'd been following a computer science path that never quite fit. Before PAAC, she'd walked into a disbanded club at Mililani High School and made the difficult choice to rebuild it from scratch because the mission felt worth fighting for. And now she's in Manila, thinking about what it might mean to become a Foreign Service Officer, to spend a life building bridges between people who the world keeps insisting are different from each other.
"I want to be caring and empathetic in whichever path I choose," she wrote, "because at the end of the day, it's not what you do but how you make others feel."
That's a PAAC sentence if there ever was one.
“I want to be caring and empathetic in whichever path I choose, because at the end of the day, it’s not what you do but how you make others feel.”
The Class of 2026 is 95 seniors strong, spread across high schools from Waimea to Hilo, from Kealakehe to Farrington, from Punahou to Pāhoa. They came to PAAC at different moments and for different reasons. Some found their way in through a friend. Some walked into a club that barely existed and decided to stay anyway. Some boarded a plane for the first time and came back changed in ways they're still finding words for.
Jayden Tran of Kalani High School is one of them. Three years in PAAC, a Vietnam Study Tour, a WorldQuest championship, and a future in electrical engineering — but what he keeps returning to is simpler than any of that. "I realized that life is so much bigger than myself," he wrote. That realization, earned somewhere between Honolulu and Hội An, is the kind of thing that doesn't leave a person.
These stories are different. But the thread running through them is the same: PAAC gave students permission to grow into themselves, steadily and without fanfare.
Jadalyn Valentin of HTA–Waipahu helped start a club, organized toy drives, hosted movie nights for local families, and discovered that leadership can begin simply by creating spaces where people feel cared for. Froy-Ian Mariano of Radford came in guarded and left softer, more open, more convinced of community's power. Kamakea Wright of Farrington traveled to Japan and returned, in their own words, a better person and a better friend. Kim Maderazo, also of Farrington, visited Bahay Tuluyan in the Philippines and came home with a commitment she put plainly: "This passion won't stop because I'm graduating. It will only continue to grow."
Braelyn Robinson of Leilehua is headed toward Dartmouth and a dream of diplomacy, her path shaped in part by a conversation with a retiring ambassador who modeled the kind of person she wants to become. Gregory Cachero of Radford, who saw his family's province in the Philippines for the first time in fifteen years during the Sister-State Study Tour, is now bound for UC Irvine and a life he's described as dedicated to public service. Kapualani Ruiz-Hyde of Castle High traveled to the Philippines and reconnected with a Filipino heritage she hadn't fully claimed before — she's heading to Windward Community College with a clearer sense of who she is and what she wants to protect.
Emma Baksic of HTA–Waipahu learned in a GVS simulation that understanding a perspective you disagree with is not the same as endorsing it — and that complex problems require the willingness to sit inside discomfort long enough to find something useful there. Naomi Tokishi of Maui High walked in as a follower and leaves as a leader, someone who no longer waits to be called on. Ailani Cruz of Kealakehe put it in a single sentence that could anchor a curriculum: "Justice is built on empathy and understanding."
“In the future, I may forget the details — but I will never forget that PAAC made me feel genuinely cared for.”
“Justice is built on empathy and understanding, and PAAC showed me how to approach the intimate otherness of the world.”
“Through PAAC, I found confidence, community, and made friends across islands.”
They're going to UH Mānoa and Dartmouth, to Creighton and Northeastern, to Temple University Japan and Colorado Mesa, to community colleges and the military, and jobs still undecided. They're going to study political science and biology, architecture and nursing, international affairs and creative media. Some of them are going abroad. Some are staying close to home.
What they're carrying with them isn't a credential. It's a way of moving through the world — curious before judgmental, empathetic before certain, willing to ask a harder question when the easy one is right there.
Coree Kobayashi of Kealakehe, who delivered the senior address at Showcase and who spent four years growing from a self-described scared 14-year-old into someone chairing civic forums and standing at a podium speaking for 95 of her peers, offered the simplest advice: do the thing. You don't need a title. You don't need permission. You just need passion and the willingness to begin.
To the Class of 2026: you built clubs, you crossed oceans, you asked better questions. You showed up for each other and for communities you'd never met before. We are so proud of what you've already become, and we cannot wait to see what you do next.
This isn't goodbye. It's a see you later 🌺
