As vice principal at Washington Middle School, it was Susan Minami-Sato’s job to deal with kids like Jowana Lobendahn.

Minami-Sato remembers Lobendahn as a bright but wayward kid, not so different from others back then who had come from troubled backgrounds and found refuge in gang life.

But while Minami-Sato would earn Lobendahn’s trust and affection, she couldn’t know the full measure of the heartache the girl carried.

Born in Euless, Texas, Lobendahn was just 4 years old when her father killed her mother and then himself. The tragedy rocked Euless’ Tongan community, and Lobendahn spent her early years suffocating under the stigma that it brought.

Lobendahn and her two siblings were taken in by her maternal grandmother and aunt, who struggled unsuccessfully to keep the kids away from the area’s heavy gang influence.

“I was one of those very hardheaded kids who did what I wanted,” Lobendahn says. “Unfortunately, the decisions I made were the wrong ones.”

The family moved to Hawaii when Lobendahn was 12. By then she had already started down a path of alcohol, drugs and violence.

“Her circumstances were difficult, but you could tell she had a good heart and good character,” Minami-Sato says. “She had an inner light.”

Former Kaimuki High School teacher and counselor Dee Yamane doesn’t recall seeing any such light when Lobendahn turned up at her office after getting into a fight on the first day of her freshman year.

“I just saw this wild child,” Yamane says, chuckling.

Lobendahn came to respect Yamane’s no-nonsense, tough-love approach. Still, Yamane could do little to keep Lobendahn from self-destructing.

By the time she was expelled from school in her senior year, Lobendahn had spent the better part of a year living at Crane Park and selling drugs to survive.

But Yamane wasn’t about to let her give up. Unable to get Lobendahn reinstated at the school, Yamane paid for her to take a GED exam.

“I told her if she didn’t pass, she’d have to pay me back the $50!” Yamane recalls.

Lobendahn passed. And while it would still be years before she would give up alcohol and drugs and leave the gang life behind, Lobendahn said the love and faith shown by both Minami-Sato and Yamane helped to keep her afloat emotionally and spiritually.

Today Lobendahn, 31, seeks to do the same for others as site coordinator for the Afterschool All-Stars program at Washington Middle School.

“Love is so powerful it can help you overcome a lot of things,” Lobendahn says. “I’m a better person every day because these kids deserve the best, and I want to be the best I can be for them.”