Ricki Lee Smith
30 years old, 6-foot-2, 175 pounds and mother of two, Ricki Lee Melody Smith is the tall and likable matriarch of her beloved ohana (family). She is a teacher of English and Japanese and a cheerleading coach at Calvary High School of Hawaii, a small Christian school in Honolulu affiliated with the Calvary Chapel churches. Ricki is multi-talented in every sense of the word: she fluently speaks four languages (English, Spanish, Hawaii Pidgin and Japanese), draws simple animations on paper, plays the guitar somewhat, loves to ice skate and competitively skated as a child, and makes a halfway decent spam musubi with brown rice. She has been married to her college sweetheart Tony for about five years, and is gently on his case about keeping on his diabetic diet. However, Ricki is also very impulsive and can easily blow her top, often in a hysterically comical way. For example, don't get her started on how she ever graduated from college as a strong C student.
Tony Smith
Robert Antonio "Tony" Smith is Ricki Lee's husband: soft-spoken, calm-tempered, and one dangerous player on the hockey rink. He is a right winger for the Honolulu Devil Dogs, a woebegone NHL expansion team that has a strong fan base and plays its home games downtown at the Neal Blaisdell Center arena. He was traded to Honolulu from another team, and he and Ricki made the emotional decision to move to Hawaii to keep their young family together. Extended home stands mean that Tony is home much more often. When not on the ice, Tony likes to tinker with electronics, especially playing with his vintage Atari 2600 video game console on the family 96-inch HDTV.
Lisa "Lee" Rogers
Lee is Ricki's biracial cousin, the proud daughter of a white dad (Pete Rogers) and African-American mom (Della Rogers). Because of her skin tone, Lee is frequently mistaken for being a light-skinned black, and she just lets it roll off her shoulders. She is an assistant women's basketball coach, fitness instructor and part-time professor of English literature at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and has an adopted daughter, Keisha. Having lived in Hawaii for a few years, she quickly picked up Hawaiian Pidgin and it now makes up virtually everything she says. She and Ricki grew up together in neighboring towns back in New York state and are as close as sisters. They freely call each other "Cuz" and meet each other as "Ricki!" then "Lee!", a play on Ricki Lee's compound first name. She teaches a course on the Shakespeare plays which is popular with kama'aina (local) students because she recites Da Bard's famous soliloquies in perfect Elizabethan English with a thick Pidgin accent.
The Keiki (kids)
Isaac SmithRicki Lee and Tony's precocious three-year-old son. His biblical name is Hebrew for "he laughs", and he's named Isaac because he made his parents laugh when Ricki learned she was pregnant. He likes to play with his toy cars on the living room floor, but forgets to put them away afterward. He calls his adult cousin Lee "Auntie Lee" because she's a grown-up, not knowing that's how all Hawaiians respect their elders. He loves his older cousin Keisha, who is his protector even though he drives her pupule (crazy) with his kohole (rascal) preschool antics.
Keisha Rogers
Six-year-old Keisha Kealoha Rogers is Cousin Lee's adopted daughter. She was originally her foster child when Lee volunteered for a foster program through her church, and they bonded so well that Lee eventually adopted her outright. Keisha was taken away from her birth parents, her mom and her boyfriend, by the State of Hawaii because they were drug addicts who refused to get clean. Despite that, she has a good relationship with her birth grandmother in Los Angeles, who she calls "Nana", and is wild about her adoptive grandparents, who she lovingly calls Tutu (grandmother) and Granpa.
Robbie Smith
Robert Antonio Smith Jr., alias Robbie, aka "Da Baby", is Ricki Lee and Tony's one-year-old son, or "da baby infink" as Popeye the Sailor would say. He is mellow, likes to crawl all over the place, and is learning to talk. He usually says one word at a time, including the notorious "no" and "mine". He calls Xena the dog "doggy" and Lani Girl the mongoose "kitty". Like his mommy, he likes wearing a baseball cap, usually a blue one. He often breaks the proverbial fourth wall and looks nonplussed at you, the reader, when the punch line or an otherwise dumb joke is revealed.
Aunty and Uncle
Pete and Della RogersPeter Paul "Pete" Rogers and his wife Della are Ricki's uncle and aunt, and Lee's parents. They both work government jobs: Pete is a code enforcement officer with the Honolulu department of public health and Della is a kindergarten teacher with the Hawaii Department of Education at Kalihi Valley Elementary School (there are no local school districts in Hawaii). They are an interracial couple, happily married for 30 years through thick and thin, including the unfortunate prejudice and stares they sometimes get from their union. After months of thought and prayer, they moved to Honolulu from their hometown of Olivebridge, New York to be closer to their growing granddaughter. Another reason for the move was that they were sick and tired of the notoriously brutal winter storms. Although they wisely don't interfere with their grown daughter's life and decisions, Lee is privately hau'oli (happy) that the family has been permanently reunited in Hawaii.
The Pets
Xena
Ricki Lee and Tony have 2.25 kids; Xena, the family longhair Chihuahua, is the 0.25 rather than 0.5 because of her little size. When excited, she barks like the battle cry of "Xena: Warrior Princess", hence her name. She is loyal to her good masters, protector of the keiki, playmate to Lani Girl the mongoose, and loves to eat her favorite canned dog food, Dog-Dog Brand, straight from the can to the supper dish, while still shaped like a can.
Lani Girl
Cousin Lee and Keisha's pet mongoose. Mongooses are found all over the island of Oahu and are considered pests. Lani Girl was found unconscious on the family's patio after a storm and she was nursed back to health. She is quick, cheerful, excitable, and expresses her love for Lee and Keisha by sitting on top of their heads. She and Xena are best friends and love to chase each other around the house. Lani Girl was given that name by Keisha because, "Well, she just looks like a Lani Girl!"
Odda Kine Characters
Jared McMooneyThe self-proclaimed class clown in Ricki's English class. A local haole boy who grew up in Honolulu, Jared playfully likes to get on his teacher's nerves--and everyone else's--with his one-liners, laid back personality and perpetual cluelessness to the obvious. He calls Mrs. Smith his favorite sparring partner, but is Ricki's favorite student anyway because he reminds her of herself.
Tita Silva
The fiesty captain of Calvary High's tiny cheerleading squad (three members total) and a student in Ricki's Japanese class. Living up to the meaning of her name in Hawaiian (tita means tomboy or strong-willed woman), Tita is the force that drives Calvary spirit, but her short temper often gets her into trouble that Ricki Lee must bail her out of.
Tutu Huhu (Mrs. Nakashima)
Dorothy Nakashima is the senior member of the Calvary High School faculty, and Ricki's mentor. She's affectionately nicknamed Tutu Huhu (angry grandmother) on campus for her age and no-nonsense approach to teaching and discipline. But she is also warm and friendly, not only embodying the Hawaiian spirit of kuleana (responsibility), but of course aloha.
Ono Grindz the Ali'i Sheep
The Calvary High campus mascot is a female sheep that was a gift from the Honolulu Zoo. Ono Grindz (Hawaii Pidgin for "delicious food") is a Jacob sheep, which have spotted coats and four horns. She was originally a barnyard animal in the children's section called the Keiki Zoo, but poor Ono often scared the very keiki (kids) who visited because of her massive multiple horns. No other facility on the island wanted her, and she legally couldn't be sold for lamb chops, so when CHS' host church offered to take her the zoo was relieved. Ono got her unusual name because of her size and appetite. She lives in her own yard on campus next to the computer lab, and as a representative of school spirit she is taken care of by the cheerleaders--whether they like it or not.
Aunty Tigress (Roselani Kwan)
Roselani is Ricki Lee and Tony's neighbor and a member of their church. The neighborhood kids call her Aunty Tigress because she's a big fan of "Kung Fu Panda", especially Master Tigress of the Furious Five. She is the family babysitter when all three adults must be away and their keiki need to be watched. Although "Aunty Tigress" is the name of a sinister woman in Chinese folk tales and Roselani was told the stories when growing up, she takes that nickname with affection because everyone knows she's a Tigress fan.
