Local’s ties to Maui drive him to fundraise

Local resident Richard Montaño spent time last week in front of the post office doing his part to help survivors of Maui’s historic and devastating fires. He has some personal history in Maui and his son, Dylan, lives just outside Lahaina with his wife Rachel and their two children; a daughter who will soon be 5 and a son who is less than a year old.

Montaño has been in Idyllwild 48 years. Residents may remember him as, for 30 years, the proprietor of Mountain Footwear. Before that he tended bar for the Chart House and the Gastrognome.

He has been surprised at the outpouring of support by locals. “I can’t believe how many people here in Idyllwild know Maui, and Lahaina in particular. And people recognize that,” as Montaño puts it, “it could happen here.” Idyllwild and Lahaina seem to have a spiritual connection; if you like one, you’ll like the other.

“He’s OK,” he said of his son. “He’s been living there a long time. The money I’m raising is going to the people he’s helping, not to him. Dylan and Rachel were fortunate in that their kids and home were safe, but both lost their jobs when Lahaina was wiped out. Probably 10,000 are not working now.”

Front Street, the main commercial district, is “all gone, employees are gone, a lot are leaving.” There has been no electricity; water must be boiled. Phone service was also out. Wednesday last week, Montaño was able to speak with his son for five minutes; before that they had only managed a few words before the signal cut out.

As of Thursday morning, he had raised “over a grand” in addition to directing donors to several charities including The Maui Salvation Army and the Lahaina Cultural Center, Na’Aikane O Maui. The center held much of the area’s written history and documents; Lahaina was the capital city of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The king had a small brick palace there, and another, later, and very stylish one, in Honolulu. That charred banyan tree you see on the news is on the site of the old “Brick Palace.”

Montaño became a father late in life. Now 86, Montaño was 44 when Dylan was born, and the new father gave up tobacco that year, anticipating the challenges of being an older dad. He remembers taking his son to his first Grateful Dead concert, dressing the then-13-year-old in tie-dye. “He’s a good human being. That’s the only thing I wanted him to be.” The apple, it seems, did not fall far from the tree.

Dylan, according to his father, is a master chef, and locals call him Chef Dylan. He worked his way through a lot of upscale places there: Marriot, Ritz Carlton, Royal Lahaina, including a high-end Mexican place called Frida’s Beach House after Frida Kahlo.

He is now one of many volunteers distributing food, water groceries, “whatever we can get them.” Maui is about a week from the mainland by ship, and, “Everything has to be shipped there; it’s backlogged, going real slow.” Even in normal conditions, packages take their time getting to the islands. “He’s telling me the boats are parked there and can’t be unloaded. The main port is burned.”

Although Montaño does not plan to continue sitting in front of the post office, he has other ideas to help, including ”Music for Maui,” a musical fundraising event at the right local venue with local talent.

Father and son alike are attached to their homes. “He loves it there; he’s never going to come back. He wants us to move there, but I love Idyllwild, I’m never going to leave … As I age, I might have to … I enjoy life, I’ve been married 50 odd years. Marcia.”

For more information call Richard Montaño at 951-659-3937.