It was just a rumor. No, it was true. Finally: Yes, it is true. Heights Drive Inn in Aiea has closed after 39 years of serving local-style plate lunches that many a customer washed down with a sweet, citrusy Green River soft drink.

The restaurant was at the base of the Aiea Medical Building at 99-128 Aiea Heights Drive, across from Aiea Shopping Center, just above Moanalua Road.

“Six months ago I had to tell my workers there’s no other choice,” owner Enid Okubo said. She wanted to be fair to her employees, some of them who had been with the company for decades.

Okubo asked them to keep it a secret, but this is Hawaii, and word leaked out. Heights Drive Inn was besieged, as people thought the closure was imminent. For months. Seven days a week.

“I didn’t even dream that it would ignite this thing,” she said.

THIS summer a post by Gary Hashimoto on an unofficial Facebook page for the restaurant assured people that it was not going to close, that it was just a rumor.

Then on Aug. 24, Reyna Flazer encouraged patrons via Facebook to “get the best fried noodles on the island before they close.”

Just a day earlier, Amanda and Aaron Frazier posted online that they had waited in line for more than 30 minutes to get what they thought would be one last boneless chicken special.

When rumors were rampant that the drive-in would close at the end of August, a sign was posted alerting customers that effective in September, “The Heights will be closed on Mondays.” It would stay open Tuesdays through Sundays, the sign said, “until the end of the year.”

The small staff of about 20 employees had been overwhelmed. “We needed one day off to prepare food,” and do other things that needed to be done, Okubo said.

She and her sisters Emi Ogawa and Evelyn Kuriyama opened the restaurant decades ago, and as the youngest, Okubo kept the business going after each of her older sisters retired.

“I’ve been the only one running it, I’m past retirement and I’d better go when I can still walk and still enjoy things,” she said. She is not going to sell the business, and indicated she would not release any of the restaurant’s recipes.

In an interview Dec. 1, Okubo said she planned to close Dec. 15, or whenever the food ran out.

The last day turned out to be Sunday, and now a sign posted outside addresses loyal customers: “For many years you have been a vital part of our lives. We will miss you.”

Okubo asked that nothing be published until after the closure.

The restaurant always had been busy enough, “I never wanted and never got any publicity, I never went on any TV show,” she said. A nationwide cable show — she thinks it was Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” — wanted to tape a segment at the restaurant for the Food Network.

“They couldn’t believe me when I told them I didn’t want to be on it,” she said. She explained that she never allowed anybody locally to feature the diner, so she wasn’t about to grant permission for national exposure.

“My nephew said, ‘You know, they’re going to think we’re an FBI secret location,’” Okubo laughed.

“The City Council wanted to give me an award, the state Legislature wanted to give me an award, and I told my son, ‘It’s ridiculous, we’re just a food place.’”

Okubo did not want any advance publicity about the closure for more than one reason. First, her employees were already overtaxed with lines of diners. Second, she had no interest in the limelight. She spoke of her physician brother-in-law, who practiced in the same building and retired at age 70. “He saved lives … I’m just a fry cook. … That kind of publicity, that’s just ridiculous. … Honestly, we haven’t saved lives. Let’s just get a grip on this.”

As yet, no new tenant has been secured for the space by the unit’s owner, Okubo’s sister Evelyn.

The building is a commercial condominium, meaning the units are independently owned and the building’s board of directors would have to approve any new tenant, according to Alette Kanakaole, principal of Alette & Associates, which manages the 40-year-old Aiea Medical Building.

Okubo had one final comment about her customers: “I’m glad we made people happy. They made us happy.”