Most of the teenagers walking across the graduation stage at Waianae High School on the west coast of Oahu had a rough year – exams, college applications, part-time jobs, the relentless pressure of being 18. Eric Schultz had all of that, plus a detail that nobody on the outside would have necessarily known: he had been living in and out of homeless shelters since he was 15 years old. On a Friday night in May 2026, he walked across that stage and collected his diploma anyway.
“I was so grateful to just walk to the stage and grab my diploma,” Schultz said after the ceremony. “I was gonna cry, but I just held it in, and I just walked the stage.” That sentence, delivered in the parking lot after the ceremony, tells you pretty much everything about who this kid is.
Growing Up Without a Stable Home
Schultz had been moving in and out of shelters since he was 15 as his parents struggled with addiction. That’s a young age to be dealing with what most adults would find overwhelming. No fixed address. No reliable routine. The kind of childhood where you’re always calculating your next move before the current one falls apart.
At one point, the calculations led him to his car. “I was living in my car for almost a year, and I was still going to school at the same time. And it didn’t change my view on anything. I just kept working toward my goal to graduate.” He said this earlier in 2026, while spending a morning handing out donated items to other homeless families along the Waianae Coast. The fact that he was doing that – giving back while still figuring out his own situation – tells you just as much as the graduation speech.
The Waianae Coast, on Oahu’s leeward side, has the highest concentration of student homelessness in the entire state – and Schultz’s story is set squarely in the middle of it. The number of students experiencing homelessness has been rising on Oahu’s west side, with Hawaii State Department of Education officials reporting the highest numbers in years. Each year, families complete a form under the federal McKinney-Vento Act identifying students who are homeless or living in transitional housing. In the Nanakuli-Waianae school complex alone, around 580 students out of roughly 6,500 across nine schools were identified in the 2026 school year – nearly 9% of the entire student population.
“I was so surprised at the amount of numbers that we were getting this year compared to years previously,” said Abigail Eli, a homeless concerns liaison for the Hawaii State Department of Education. “I think cumulatively, we’re at about 580 students. That’s the highest numbers that we’ve seen in a while.”
Schultz was one of those students. He wasn’t a statistic – he was showing up, attending class, setting goals – but he was also just one kid inside a number that most people never think about until a story like his puts a face on it.
The Scale of the Problem on Oahu
The homelessness data for Hawaii is striking even before you get to the youth figures. According to the 2024 Point in Time Count, a total of 6,389 people experienced homelessness statewide, with the majority – 4,494 people – on Oahu. Between 2023 and 2024 on Oahu alone, the total number of people experiencing homelessness increased by 12%.
For minors, the picture is just as sobering. According to the latest Point in Time count data, there were 802 homeless minors on Oahu, and nearly 90 percent of them were staying in shelters. Schultz was counted among them. The shelter number is notable – it means most of these kids aren’t sleeping rough on the streets. They’re in emergency beds, transitional housing, or staying with relative strangers, which looks stable from the outside but rarely feels that way from the inside.
Graduating while homeless is harder than it sounds – and it already sounds hard. Nationally, a 2026 fact sheet from Schoolhouse Connection put the high school graduation rate for homeless students at 69.1% for the 2022-2023 school year – nearly 18 percentage points below the rate for all students. Graduating, for a homeless teen, is not a given. It’s a decision that has to be made repeatedly, against a background of disruption that most students never encounter. Schultz made that decision and kept making it.
A Hanai Auntie and a Second Chance
A turning point came when Desiree Adams entered the picture. Adams became one of Schultz’s “hanai aunties,” helping him get back on track. “He used to come over a lot because he was hungry and he didn’t have any food to eat,” she said. Adams let him live in her family’s house for more than a year, after making him promise that he would follow her rules – including obeying a curfew – and go back to school.
The word “hanai” carries significant weight in Hawaiian culture. It comes from the Hawaiian language, with its root meaning to feed or nourish. According to the University of Hawaii at Hilo, hanai as it was traditionally practiced in Hawaiian culture referred to a situation where a child was taken permanently to be raised, educated, and loved by someone other than their natural parents, usually grandparents or other relatives. In Schultz’s case, the hanai relationship wasn’t a formal legal arrangement – it was a woman seeing a hungry kid, opening her door, and making one clear condition: go back to school.
Adams described how Schultz had asked for her help getting back into school, and she took him, got the paperwork together, and worked with his parents through the process. “His parents were very supportive of me helping him,” she said. That’s an often-overlooked detail. His parents, despite their struggles, didn’t stand in the way of someone trying to help their son.
What Adams did next is the part that sticks. “He thanks me a lot, but I said I don’t want any credit for this accomplishment,” she told reporters. “You made the choice to change, and you made the choice to set your goals and follow your goals.” She’s right, of course. She provided conditions. Schultz did the work.
The Place That Helped Hold It Together
While Adams gave Schultz a roof and a set of expectations, another institution has played a longer-term role in his stability. Schultz has received housing and support through RYSE (Residential Youth Services and Empowerment), a nonprofit transitional shelter operating on the Waianae Coast.
RYSE is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization operating a youth access center and shelter services in Kailua, Oahu. From 8am to 8pm, seven days a week, young people ages 14-24 can use its drop-in services free of charge, with the goal of providing safety and helping youth get off the streets so they can live as healthy, stable adults. RYSE operates one emergency housing shelter and seven housing programs for youth ages 18-24 across the island, supporting residents with medical appointments, counseling, GED classes, education, employment assistance, and financial literacy training.
The organization is one of the main reasons that a teenager living out of his car on the Waianae Coast even had a viable path to graduation. Without that infrastructure – a place to sleep consistently, people checking in, programs designed specifically for youth in exactly this situation – the diploma Schultz is now holding would have been far less likely. “We’re here to show what’s possible, not just what’s wrong,” RYSE executive director Carla Houser said. “Every connection we make, every internship we offer, and every youth we walk alongside is a step toward a future rooted in stability, dignity and purpose.”
What Comes Next for Eric Schultz – and the Homeless Teen Graduates He’s Thinking About
With his diploma in hand, Schultz plans to attend trade school to study plumbing, but he also plans to continue helping those experiencing housing insecurity in the Waianae area. Plumbing is one of the trades with strong employment prospects in Hawaii, a state where housing construction demand has outpaced the available workforce for years.
But the more striking part of what Schultz said after his graduation wasn’t about his own future. It was about everyone else’s. “I hope my story can touch other people to go out at their schools to help find funding, or stuff to help out the community.” He’s 18, just graduated, still living in a transitional shelter – and the first thing he’s thinking about is other kids in the same position.
Earlier in the year, before graduation even arrived, he was already acting on that instinct. Hawaii News Now first met him in early 2026, when he spent a morning handing out donated items to homeless families along the Waianae Coast. He had been helping distribute donated goods to other families affected by homelessness back in February 2026. “Seeing all these kids out here today, it’s just hurtful, hurts me,” he said.
People who’ve been through not knowing where they’ll sleep tend not to look away from it the way people with stable housing often do.
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The Part Worth Sitting With
A lot of what gets written about stories like Eric Schultz’s leans into the miracle framing – against all odds, one kid beat the system. And his graduation is genuinely worth celebrating. But that framing does real damage when it’s taken too far, because it makes the outcome look like it was mostly about him: his determination, his resilience, his decision to keep going. That’s all real. But he also had Desiree Adams. He had RYSE. He had teachers at Waianae High School who presumably didn’t write him off. He had parents who, despite their own battles, supported someone else trying to help their son.
The harder truth is that there are 801 other minors on Oahu who were counted as homeless in the most recent data, and not all of them have a Desiree Adams. Not all of them have a functioning RYSE nearby, or a school with a homeless concerns liaison who notices the numbers rising. The outcome for any one kid has as much to do with which support structures happen to exist in their particular corner of the island as it does with their character.
Schultz himself seems to understand this. His graduation is his – no one can take that from him. But his instinct, the second it was over, was not to reflect on his own achievement. It was to ask what his story might do for someone who’s still in it. That’s not resilience for its own sake. That’s someone who knows exactly what the difference between making it and not making it actually looks like – and who hasn’t looked away.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.