By Jonathan Okanes, Cal Athletic Communications
BERKELEY – Former Cal football player Keala Keanaaina has seven kids, so every day the question is asked.
“How was school today?”
The twist is it’s not always Keanaaina doing the asking.
Keanaaina’s kids aren’t the only ones in his household attending school these days. Keanaaina is back on campus at Cal 14 years after playing for the Bears. Following a career in the Arena Football League and a lengthy stint as a police officer for the city of San Mateo, Keanaaina decided the time was right to return to Berkeley to take the final six classes necessary that will earn him his degree in American Studies.
“I’d always wanted to come back and complete my degree,” Keanaaina said. “It was a promise that I made to my family. My motivation now is really my children. I find myself sometimes in situations where I’m telling them to get good grades and focus on education, and yet I haven’t done my part. For me, it’s really about my children and being that example for them.”
Keanaaina’s children range from ages 2-16. His family has rallied around his return to school, with his wife, Iona, and kids providing enthusiastic support on a daily basis.
Keanaaina often finds himself pulling up next to one of his kids to do homework or reading at home.
“They are my biggest cheerleaders,” Keanaaina said. “They root me on. When I come home, they ask me how school was today. I ask them how their day was at school. They show me their A on their paper and I show them my A. It’s almost a competition. It’s really reinforced the value of academics.”
Keanaaina’s return to Cal is having a major impact on his family. Not only do his children see him working hard on his classwork at home, he’s been able to bring them on campus to give them a first-hand look at college.
“I have a lot of Cal memorabilia at the house, so they know Cal,” Keanaaina said. “When they see Cal on TV, they root for Cal. But it wasn’t until they set foot on campus and saw all the buildings that they said they wanted to go to college. I had always talked to them about college and set goals with them, but it wasn’t until they were able to touch it and feel it and walk in the stadium and go to the tower that they wanted to go to college.”
Keanaaina’s choice to go back to college came after he made a significant impact on his community as a police officer, working with the Police Activities League and as a school resource officer. Keanaaina won a handful of community service awards for his work with troubled youth, especially those in his native Pacific Islander community.
“Keala was really able to change lives,” said Paul Pak, a San Mateo police officer and former executive director of the Police Activities League. “There have been repeated success stories that we are still seeing to this day because of him. There are kids who would be in our prison system if it weren’t for him; I have no doubt about it.”
An injured knee ended Keanaaina’s professional playing career, which included a free agent stint with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns. When he returned to his neighborhood in San Mateo, Keanaaina was concerned with a growing troubling street culture among Pacific Islander youth. His neighbor, the captain of the San Mateo Police Department who repeatedly had encouraged Keanaaina to join the force, made one final pitch.
“He said this is the last time I’ll ever ask you to become a police officer,” Keanaaina said. “Just go down and talk to my buddy at the police station and I won’t bother you anymore. He told me that in his opinion there is no better way for me to impact their lives by having the authority of a police officer and directing them in certain ways.”
Keanaaina got the job and immediately went to work. He approached at-risk kids in his Pacific Islander community and asked them to suggest something they could do that would be positive. The consensus was to start a rugby program.
“We basically told them they are not going to belong to the streets or the gangs – they are going to belong to something that’s positive,” Keanaaina said. “They said they wanted to play rugby. If they told me they wanted to play badminton, we would have had the best badminton team in the world.”
The program was a roaring success. It brought Pacific Islander families together and started to take the “’at-risk” label off the kids. Not only that, the rugby team became a success on the field. At one point, it was ranked No. 3 in the country on the high school level.
“He’s definitely a faithful and committed man,” Iona said. “He has love for our kids and love for other kids – especially the kids that come from troubled homes. He always went out of his way for them. He’d come home late some nights because he was taking a bunch of kids home from a rugby game.”
The rugby program and success Keanaaina had changing his community was not without its challenges. There was heightening tension between the Pacific Islander community and the police, and Keanaaina had to convince the youth that he was their ally rather than their adversary.
He was able to do that, slowly but surely.
“These were some pretty rough kids and they didn’t want to be seen with a police officer,” Keanaaina said. “I’d ask if they want a ride home after rugby practice. After two weeks, they said I could drop them off by the bridge. Four weeks later, they let me cross the freeway and drop them off on the other side. Six weeks into it, I asked if they want me to drop them off at the shopping center by their house, and they said I could drive right up to their house.
“Eventually, I was introduced to their parents. We had Friday night dinners where their parents brought food. It became a whole community team.”
After five years as a school resource officer, Keanaaina moved into a patrol role. He did that for almost five years but a back injury was becoming worse and worse. Finally, he decided to take a medical retirement from the police force and come back to Berkeley.
“Just being on campus again, there is just a renewed level of appreciation,” Keanaaina said. “It’s exciting to walk into class. I’m not going to say I’m the guy who sits in the front row, because I’m not the guy who sits in the front row. But I sit in a place where I observe.”
Keanaaina now has designs on graduate school. Working closely with Derek Van Rheenen, Director of Cal’s Athletic Study Center, Keanaaina is looking at options for a postgraduate degree. Whatever he ends up doing after completing his education, you can guarantee it will include a measure of difference-making in his community.
And something that will make his big family proud as well.
“It’s part of who I am. That will never leave me,” Keanaaina said. “Whatever I do, it has to be a two-way street. It has to be something where it’s rewarding. Not so much rewarding that I need something back, but I need to be part of something where I feel like I’m giving. I need to see that it’s impacting someone.”
