A Lahaina wildfire survivor urges the community to help recover his stolen jeep

HONOLULU(KHON2) — A young man robbed of the one thing he had left that survived the Lahaina wildfires, his jeep. But 20-year-old Kailana Baylosis said it’s much more than a car.

“Just return it, please. That’s all I ask,” Baylosis said hoping his message reaches the people who took his jeep.

The UH Manoa student has been through a lot in the last year, and the theft of his 2001 maroon Jeep Cherokee was another punch to the gut.

Baylosis said he parked it in the Zone 22 parking structure on Dole St. at 1 a.m. Tuesday, April 16. When he came back at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon, it was gone.

“I was really dumbfounded. I had to retrace my steps and think,” he explained. “When I realized that this is where I parked my car, it was just devastation. My heart just sank.”

To him it is more than just a mode of transportation.

“(The jeep) was actually the reason why I’m standing here today,” he said. “This is the jeep that got me out of Lahaina.”

He believes that jeep saved his life.

Everything else was destroyed in the Aug. 8 wildfires.

“My home, everything I owned. All I had left was the car,” Baylosis explained.

But it also has a deeper significance. It was a gift from his grandparents Narciso and Vanessa Baylosis who both died in the Lahaina fires.

“The jeep was the last thing that I could remember them by.”

He just wants it back.

“It would really restore or I guess that piece of my heart that got taken from me,” he said. “This car was really the only thing that I was able to find stability in, and if that gets returned to me, it will make life a little bit more easy.”

Kailana said he always parks in Zone 22 on Dole St. and has never had any problems. But he said he has recently heard of other incidents in the area.

“A car got stolen just two days ago,” he said. “Actually, in the same building. And earlier in the semester, near the Hawaiian studies building, which is right down here from us, another truck got stolen.”

According to HPD Crimemapping, there have been 25 vehicle thefts within a mile radius of the UH Manoa Campus Center in the last four weeks alone.

There is a video camera at the entrance to the parking structure Kailana’s jeep was taken from. He said HPD is investigating the theft.

He’s also hoping to get his fishing poles back. They were inside the jeep.

“After the fire, it was also like a thing to help me get my mind off of the stress of the fire,” he said. “To lose that is also another big blow.”

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Anyone with information about the car theft is asked to contact HPD.