Restaurants aid family who lost their father while vacationing on Maui
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MAUI, Hawaii (KITV) — Anthony Briggs of Seattle took his fiancé and three kids to Maui last week to make some final memories–he had stage four pancreatic cancer and didn’t have much time left.
Just a day after arriving on the island, Briggs was taken to the hospital and admitted into ICU.
“Because of COVID, we couldn’t see him in ICU, and the one thing that he wanted to do was be with his family when he passed,” Briggs’ fiancé MJ Nguyen said.
Despite wanting to be resuscitated, Nguyen said Briggs decided to move to hospice to spend his final days with his family.
“All his family flew in and we got to be with him, in the room, and I mean he was just so happy,” Nguyen added.
“The look on his face when we were all there, you know he was at peace at that point when he knew his family was there with him.”
Family members described Briggs as a die hard Seahawks fan, a loyal friend, and a dedicated father.
“He was just one of the good ones that are out there, just so full of life and just the spark and light of our family, so unfortunately that light has gone out,” Briggs’ cousin said.
Amid the heartbreak, came help from several people in the Maui community.
On the night Briggs was taken to the hospital, Nguyen met a woman she would never forget–Cheyenne Bowman.
Bowman recalled as she saw the family walking in the parking lot of the shopping center in Wailea where she works, “they had sweatshirts that said cancer sucks.”
As a mother whose son survived four different cancers, Bowman empathized, and enlisted a few restaurants to donate meals to Briggs’ family.
“The Monkeypod upstairs got them beverages, and then the market downstairs and Manoli’s in Wailea showed the love also for Maui and our ‘Ohana, and then Moose’s in Kihei did,” Bowman said.
Nguyen called the generous gestures a shining example of the “aloha spirit.”
“These are just complete strangers that we’ve never met before in our life,” Nguyen said.
“You know, (they) reached out to us and just wanted to make things easier for us and we couldn’t be more grateful.”
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