The man had a simple vision that guided his complicated story. Photo: Matt George
As he gazes out to the northwest, the trade winds sweeping down from the heights and out over the ocean tug at Matt Kester’s hair and whisper into his ears. Drops of water hang on his eyelashes and as he blinks they fall and make their way to his upper lip. He tastes the salt on the tip of his tongue. Upright, his left hand on his thigh and rotating his legs he holds his position on his surfboard. He is far out to sea and with his right hand he picks at the wax of his surfboard’s deck and he waits, confident and spirited. A horse ready to run.
The towering humps of the northwest swell have been hammering through the west bowl here at Sunset Beach since dawn and he has timed his noon go out for the best conditions of the day. The massive reef spread out below him seems as eager as he to receive the big waves. It is a reef he knows well. A passion decades long. He is in his 50s now, rangy, still muscled tight and he has been tuned into the break since he first paddled out here at 16 years old. His desire for this wave is a vow he has never betrayed. He lifts his chin higher to look out at the horizon and he waits for the inevitable. His inevitable, his ride. He sits high on his surfboard and this is all he needs in his life during these moments alone. He has earned them.
At a restless 16 years old he’d grabbed a surfboard and ran away from his Ventura, California home and its Mormon tenets. He’d found a different brand of spiritualism that he knew he would on the North Shore of Oahu. The god almighty space of it, the constant hissing sound of the surf, the scent of plumerias, the calls of mourning doves and a brand of heroism he always felt he was capable of. A Wild West setting that California could never have lived up to. He was surviving to surf. Just he, Hawaii and his instincts.
Possessing a rare discipline he got himself through high school in Hawaii with a pizza delivery job and rented closet space as his base of operations. A bright, creative student, the faculty didn’t ask too many questions as long as he kept making them look good. Luck came his way when he met a local family that saw a goodness in his raw spirit and they helped him out with things far more valuable than money. The family lived right on the point at Sunset Beach and he would spend his weekends with them getting a real education on how to fish and dive and surf Sunset without a leash. And in that way, the waves at Sunset Beach became his. He’d never been afraid to earn anything. Particularly self respect.
The van down by the surf break that helped Kester achieve his dreams. Photo: Kester
Knowing that being a deadbeat haole wasn’t for him, he turned to academics in earnest. He was a natural. He vectored his Mormon background into a shot at Brigham Young University just around the corner from Sunset Beach. Still working at pizza joints for 20 bucks a night and all the lasagna he could eat, taking odd jobs washing dishes and setting fins and hot-coating surfboards at backyard swamp factories, it took him eight hard years to graduate from BYU debt free as a history major. The achievement an uncommon marvel in itself.
He’d also fallen in love and married a beauty named Summer with no more than a 100 bucks in his pocket. His wife ran a hair salon out of the living room of their small rental. They just got by. It was the year 2000 when a job came up in California selling ads for an upstart surfing website. The dough seemed good, so he had to take it. He and his lady moved to the mainland to get ahead. But the job just didn’t fit, so he stuck it for a year, saving pennies, and then quit and split for Santa Barbara with his eye on earning a masters degree at UCSB. By 2003 he and Summer had two kids, he had earned a Masters degree in history and he was well on his way to a PhD. Again, debt free. There was that discipline again.
The big picture all along was to get back to the North Shore and nab a professorship at BYU. BYU was, after all, only a few miles from Sunset Beach. What he ended up with was better. He impressed the boys at BYU for a second time in his life and scored a gig running the archives there. A miracle job for a prospective doctor of history considering the Mormons had been running around Hawaii since 1850. That and the fact that he and his good friends, Tamayo Perry and Pancho Sullivan, were the first ones in the water at Pipe and Sunset every morning also fit like a glove.
But PhD or no, money was always an issue. So he wrote a book on the history of Polynesians in the Old West. The Oxford press picked it up to some acclaim but the riches did not appear. That’s when Kyle Harimoto, an old friend and a writer on the new Hawaii Five-O TV show, read Kester’s book, loved the style of it and suggested Kester try his hand at a screenplay for some cash. So Kester did. Turns out Kester’s script was so good that Warner Brothers bought it. Then came the agent and the manager and the leave of absence from the BYU archives to move the family back to California to chase the Hollywood dollar.
The money was handy, but the family was miserable in L.A. So Kester quit tinsel town and returned to the BYU archives, poorer but far richer in waves and friends and happiness for he, Summer and the kids. But money was always tight and with a third child now, the strain was showing.
That’s when out of nowhere the agent called with another TV show writing gig. And Kester’s discipline kicked in again. He took the gig. But this time things would be different. This time he would gamble it all. He went to L.A. alone, bought a big white van, surf rigged it and secretly lived in it while sending every dime he made back to the family in Hawaii. Impossibly, he got away with it for three years. Three long, scrabbling years of van life before their was such a thing. Three years of secret overnight parking spots and public bathrooms, dodging executives, parking down the street from the studios, lonely laundromats and a dodgy shower he’d found in the bowels of the Griffith Observatory. Doing it tough for the family and in a way, for Sunset Beach. Beyond the realms of all reason, the hardships of van life paid off. And a humble house for his family, near enough if not exactly on Sunset Beach, was the result.
Rescue: Hi-Surf has been praised for its authenticity, and that’s mostly thanks to its creator. Photo: RHS
Round about that time, John Wells, super producer of such TV hits as ER and The West Wing, impressed with Kester’s work ethic, approached Kester and asked him what kind of show he would write if left to his own devices. With Hawaii and family in mind, Kester answered on the spot. A lifeguard drama set on the North Shore. A show about the heroism that his friends exhibit every day. Miraculously, John Wells said go for it. So Kester wrote the script. And Rescue: Hi-Surf was born.
So now, a couple 100 yards from Sunset Beach’s Lifeguard tower number 25 and not seven miles from house and family and not much further than that to his new hit TV show’s production offices, Matt Kester sits on the biggest surfboard in his quiver, scanning the horizon at Sunset Beach waiting for the very waves he has fought so hard for. That he has dreamed of riding for the rest of his life since he ran away from home at 16 years old. The waves that had become more a belief than anything else during those long years of sacrifice.
And then the waves arrive. And in a mountainous phalanx they rise and fringe and the trade winds tear at them, turning their upper reaches into showers of saltwater smoke and Kester makes his choice and slides down onto his stomach, and with 10 powerful strokes he finds himself dropping into a giant. A menacing, moving wall of water and turmoil. All his life, a prize that he has taken wild gambles for. And in those rushing, thunderous moments, all the gambles have paid off and he has won. And with a love of family and a security he has never known, Matt Kester has finally found his way home.
