Chad Koyanagi, a psychiatrist who’s spent decades treating Honolulu’s homeless population, arrived Monday at an oceanside encampment in the city’s Sand Island area to search for a woman with mental health struggles who seemed to think she was on the Big Island.
A man who sleeps in an abandoned red Mustang pointed to a patch of sidewalk covered by a gray tarp. The tent was empty. But it didn’t take long for Koyanagi to find its nightly occupant talking to herself while walking alone on a nearby beach.
Within days, the psychiatrist’s crisis intervention would lead the woman to agree to move off the streets and into an emergency care facility in Iwilei that could connect her with housing and mental health care, if she’s willing to receive it…