WAILUA — For 13 years, Kapa‘a resident Christina Aqui sold and used cocaine and crystal amphetamine, and loved her life.
Two male lovers in her life, at separate times, helped her to amass a fortune. They had money and owned pick-up trucks. Life was leisurely, and she was held in awe by her peers.
That world collapsed for Aqui in October 2000, when she began serving a one-year jail sentence on a drug conviction.
Aqui spent time first at the Kaua‘i Community Correctional Center in Wailua and then time at the Women’s Prison on O‘ahu before her release.
The Kapa‘a woman insisted at the time that a wrong had been foisted on her. She denied being a drug user even though she tested positive for crystal amphetamine, also known as ice, shortly after incarceration at KCCC.
But within 2 1/2 months of incarceration, Aqui said a “force” crossed her path that changed her life forever, God.
Faith in religion and the specter of more jail time on future drug charges compels her to lead a drug-free life “day-by-day,” said Aqui, 43, as she spoke Saturday before a women’s meeting. She began taking drugs at age 26 and stopped taking drugs at age 39, when she went into jail.
“I would not be anywhere today without him (God),” said Aqui, wiping back tears, her voice stark and solemn.
Today, she works for a Lihu‘e business, ministers to women inmates at KCCC and plans to become a drug-prevention counselor one day.
Aqui told her life-changing story at a meeting of the Kauai Women’s Aglow at the Aloha Beach Resort in Wailua.
The Kaua‘i group is part of Aglow International, an intercultural, transdenominational organization of Christian women with groups in more than 145 nations on six continents.
Among its goals, the group, which is headquartered in Edmonds, Wa., helps to restore and mobilize women and promotes gender reconciliation in the body of Christ, said Carol “Cece” Claunch, president of the Kaua‘i group.
The sponsors of the meeting hope Aqui’s experience will motivate drug users on Kaua‘i to abandoned their drug habit and become part of a productive life.
“She sees the destruction the drug causes, not only to the user but to the family that surrounds that person,” said Helen Juliano, a public relations secretary for Kaua‘i Women’s. “She wants to make a difference and get the message out that ice can be beaten.”
Trouble entered Aqui’s life at an early age, the reformed drug user said.
In the early 1960s, Aqui said a man befriended her mother and moved into the family home on O‘ahu when Aqui was about three years old.
Aqui said the man molested her between the ages of four and seven. She said she chose to remain silent on the matter, and “I wore a mask at the early age of four to hide my secret.”
The man took liberties on other family members, Aqui recalled.
“At one point, he had taken the wrong sister, and told me it was my fault because I looked like her,” Aqui said.
She kept other secrets to herself. “I came across another uncle who molested me, and I kept another secret,” Aqui said.
Her own father, whom she said she respected, didn’t live with the family because he was serving in the military on the Mainland in the early 1960s.
Aqui moved to Kaua‘i and married when she was 18 years old, but divorced her husband after 8 1/2 years of marriage.
Life was normal but boring with him, and she said she “was looking for something.”
That something, she said, came in the form of another man who introduced her to the world of illegal drugs.
“He introduced me to cocaine and eventually introduced me to ice (crystal amphetamine),” she said. Aqui said she stayed with her new boyfriend for over 8 years as well because “I had become co-dependent).” In her eyes, the man offered her the chance to find “comfortability.” Instead she found “drug abuse” and a “man who was a drug dealer.” “We dealt cocaine and I used ice,” she added. Aqui said she found she couldn’t always use drugs freely around him. “He (her boyfriend) was controlling, and I had to justify why I was using drugs behind his back,” Aqui said. Aqui continued her buying and selling of drugs with a third man until both were busted on drug charges.
Aqui recalled going to court on drug charges only to be surprised. “I went to court, but he didn’t come with me,” she said. Although she was bound for jail, she said she still didn’t believe that she was a drug user and had caused anyone any harm.
Following 2 1/2 months of jail time at KCCC, Aqui said she went through a life-changing experience while working in the coffee fields of South Kaua‘i as part of a work detail when she said God came into her life.
“I fell to my knees and cried, and I thanked God for putting me where I needed to be (to be in jail for a year to beat the effects of ice),” Aqui said.
She said she realized for the first time in 13 years of using and selling drugs, her life had been one of lies and deception.
At that point, she said she also came to understand she had hurt herself physically, her son, now 23 years old, family and friends for many years.
“All the denial about being a drug user was lifted, thirty-nine years of layers (of life) were removed,” said Aqui, who was 39 years old at the time.
What happened during the work detail also lay bare to her what she had become: “I was a drug user and a drug dealer,” she said. “I knew I had to become a better person than the one who had entered jail.”
The moment also made her realize that if she had not been put in jail, she would have continued using drugs, caused more harm to herself and others, and died prematurely.
She said her new-found love for God allowed her to shed feelings of shame and to tell her story of her buried past to other inmates and KCCC officials.
“I had a lot of anger toward these men who inflicted this (molestation ) on me,” Aqui said.
But she said KCCC warden Neal Wagatsuma put a spin on her life’s story that made her see her situation in a better way.
“He told me that I can’t blame them,” she said, and that the circumstances that prompted them to sexually molest her probably happened to them when they were young, creating a “generational cycle of sickness.”
In her mind, her drug addiction was not directly tied to her molestation, but “the molestation laid the foundation of who I was” and served as part of a life cycle that led her to use drugs, Aqui said. “Coming out” with her secrets also didn’t bother her because she found out many of the other women inmates had their own secrets and tragedies in life, Aqui said.
“There are 20 year-olds who murder their husbands,” she said. From their tales, Aqui said she became wiser and more mature about life.
Knowing God also has negated feelings of any shame about her past, she said.
Bible studies led by the Kapa‘a Missionary Church, prison ministry counselor Randy Tomlinson and Cleansing Stream Ministry also strengthened her ties to God and her commitment to being drug- free, Aqui said.
“It took going to Bible school to make me realize that from the time I was four years old to today, that God has been molding me,” Aqui said.
At age 40, Aqui finished her one-year jail time, and went through recovery programs offered through Hina Mauka.
Being in jail for a year helped purge the chemicals from her body, she believes, and, as a result, her rehabilitation has been expedited.
For a while after she got out of jail, she avoided riding in air-conditioned cars, she said, because the freon, a refrigerant, “smells like the taste of ice,” Aqui said.
She said her recovery is not full-proof, and that she is “taking it day-by-day.”
Her faith in God has been the most useful tool in helping her stay drug-free, Aqui said.
She said she would like to think religion could help reduce the use of ice on Kaua‘i and elsewhere in the state, but it is only “a tool that worked for me.”
Lester Chang, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) and lchang@pulitzer.net
