She Went to Idaho and Couldn't Find Lumpia Wrappers Anywhere. That's When She Understood What Growing Up in Hawaiʻi Really Meant.
One of 42 public high school students selected for the 2026 Hawaiʻi Sister-State Study Tours.
Student Snapshot
Name: Isabelle Myers
Preferred Name: Izzy
School: Pearl City High School
Grade: 11th
Home Community: Pearl City, Oʻahu
Delegation: Jeju Island
Travel Dates: March 14–25/26, 2026
Focus Interests / Extracurriculars: Best Buddies Chapter President (monthly activities for members with and without intellectual/developmental disabilities); Leo Club Secretary; Science Olympiad coach for middle school students (Mondays and Wednesdays — makes presentations, teaches lessons); classroom cleaner at her former elementary school (Tuesdays and Thursdays — paid); Academy Ambassador (school tour guide representative); Mālama Mentor program participant (currently training); taekwondo — second Dan black belt (7 years); traveled to Science Olympiad Nationals in Kansas (8th grade) and Michigan (9th grade); HOSA ILC in Tennessee (7th grade); Best Buddies Leadership Conference at Indiana State University (2025)
Career Aspirations: Geophysical or civil engineering — she names this specifically and connects it directly to the trip, wanting to learn how other countries adapt to climate change and natural disasters so she can eventually build reliable structures to protect Hawaiʻi
Why They Were Selected
Izzy coaches middle schoolers in Science Olympiad, cleans classrooms at her old elementary school, mentors students with developmental disabilities, leads Best Buddies, and has been doing taekwondo for seven years — all simultaneously, all of it voluntary or near-voluntary. Her essay opens with a story about lumpia wrappers in an Idaho grocery store that is somehow both funny and genuinely moving. She is quarter Filipino, her first-choice delegation was the Philippines, and she is going to Jeju. She brings to this trip the same thing she brings to everything: the discipline to show up, the openness to learn, and an instinct for making people feel included that was shaped by growing up in Pearl City.
What They're Excited About
Reading the email and not believing it at first; squealing with delight when she realized she did get in; meeting new people and making friends; her first international trip; diving into the customs of another culture
She Went to Idaho and Couldn't Find Lumpia Wrappers Anywhere. That's When She Understood What Growing Up in Hawaiʻi Really Meant.
Izzy Myers was visiting her grandmother in Idaho for Christmas when her family tried to continue a tradition: homemade lumpia, the same as every birthday and holiday back in Pearl City. They had almost everything. Just not the wrappers. What followed was a trip to multiple stores across Idaho, and a realization that hit her harder than she expected — an ingredient so ordinary at home that it barely registered was, somewhere else, nearly impossible to find. That moment, small and a little absurd, is when Hawaiʻi's multicultural everyday became visible to her. This spring, the Pearl City High junior is taking that understanding to Jeju Island as a PAAC Sister-State Student Ambassador.
Izzy is one of the most consistently present students in Pearl City's community. Twice a week she coaches middle schoolers in Science Olympiad. Twice a week she cleans classrooms at her former elementary school. She's the president of her school's Best Buddies chapter — organizing monthly activities for members with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities. She's Leo Club secretary, an Academy Ambassador and school tour guide, and a second Dan black belt in taekwondo after seven years of training. She wants to be a geophysical or civil engineer, and she wants to come back to Hawaiʻi and build structures that can withstand what climate change and natural disasters are throwing at the islands.
Izzy was selected because she already knows how to show up for people who need something from her — middle schoolers who need a science concept explained, students with IDD who need an activity planned, a whole squad of fifth graders who needed someone to just be kind to the white kid in class. Pearl City gave her that instinct. She's going to Jeju to deepen it.
"I was one of two white kids in my grade, but nobody ever made fun of us or ridiculed us. I was included in everything... Due to the kindness of the kids in my grade, the utter acceptance that people in Hawaiʻi have, I was able to have an amazing childhood and an amazing life." — Isabelle Myers, Pearl City High School, Class of 2027
When Izzy comes home to Pearl City from Jeju, she'll arrive with a broader sense of how island communities solve hard problems — and a sharper sense of the engineer she wants to become. For a community that taught her what inclusion feels like, she's planning to spend her career giving that back.
