HONOLULU — A search launched when a helicopter piloted by a well-known Honolulu personal injury attorney didn’t arrive at his Molokai home as expected led fire crews to wreckage on the east end of the island and no survivors. ADVERTISING
HONOLULU — A search launched when a helicopter piloted by a well-known Honolulu personal injury attorney didn’t arrive at his Molokai home as expected led fire crews to wreckage on the east end of the island and no survivors.
Gary Galiher, 70, left Honolulu on Tuesday evening and headed to Molokai, where he has a home, said Ilana Waxman, managing partner of Galiher DeRobertis Waxman. The Honolulu law firm specializes in mesothelioma and asbestos cases.
When no one could get ahold of Galiher on Wednesday morning, one of his employees called 911, Waxman said. The Coast Guard began searching from the air and from the ocean, along with the Maui Fire Department.
A woman was also aboard the helicopter, the Coast Guard said. “My understanding is that it’s a friend of his, but I don’t know,” Waxman said.
Galiher owned his Molokai home for decades and made the interisland flight often, Waxman said. He was planning to spend Wednesday there, she said.
“He was an incredible person and an incredible lawyer,” she said, calling his death a tragic loss for the Honolulu legal community. “That is the one very small silver-lining is he was doing what he loved, and he was where he loved to be. But that’s a small comfort, I have to say.”
The wreckage was found Wednesday afternoon about a half-mile north of Galiher’s property, Fire Services Chief Edward Taomoto said. Rescue crews who reached the crash site, which is about 1.3 miles above Kamehameha V Highway, reported that there were no survivors, Taomoto said. The crash site is in a remote area thick with foliage on a mountain slope, he said.
The Maui Police Department will coordinate recovery of the victims and secure the wreckage scene for federal investigators, he said.
Molokai was a special place for Galiher, Waxman said, recalling how he told her that he helped pay for law school by diving for black coral off the island.
Galiher started practicing law in 1977, according to his biography on his firm’s website: “He first worked as a carpenter, as a commercial diver and also as a captain of a dive shop tour boat.” After teaching special education at Haleiwa Elementary School for four years, he decided to study law and graduated from the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the bio said.
“When he had some money from the success of his law firm, that’s what he wanted— not a house on the beach in Kahala,” Waxman said. “He wanted a place on Molokai.”
