LOS ANGELES – For years, Jayden Maiava’s pride has lingered an ocean away, heartstrings tugged back to his second home nestled at the foot of the south stretch of the Ko’olau mountain range on O’ahu. He was raised there, in part, in Palolo Valley, in a wide stretch of state-funded housing projects well-known to Honolulu natives . Maiava’s uncle David Tautofi grew up there, too, in that community where all the units looked the same, families hanging on by government paychecks and gangs and drugs and alcohol flowed rampant.
But the kids like Maiava never saw the problems, or heard the stigma that dripped off the word Palolo . They saw the beaches of Waikiki, the beauty of Ko’olau. They saw their friends, and family, and love, Maiava growing up with seven siblings.
Life was simple, long before it twisted into something much more complex, and Maiava was a talkative boy free of spirit. He is a different presence now, as a young man at USC. Little braggadocio arrived with Maiava when the quarterback transferred from UNLV in the winter, into a program that was already Miller Moss’ to lose.
He spoke little publicly, with little margin for error. Slow to talk. Quick to listen.
“Taking it all in,” uncle Tautofi described in the spring, “as much as he can.” There has been much to take in, more change in Maiava’s formative years than in many people’s lifetimes. He was tugged away from Palolo to move to Las Vegas, and then brought back to Hawaii, and then yanked .