A successful Florida businessman whose wife of four decades was killed last month in a two-car collision in North Kona described her as “an angel on Earth.”
Steve Freedman said he bears no ill-will toward the 19-year-old man who was arrested after the crash July 14 that took the life of 63-year-old Rhonda Dee DePontes Freedman.
“He didn’t know her, but he would’ve loved her,” Freedman said of Trevor Shoemaker-Hassey, the driver of the 2019 Nissan Rogue that police said crossed the double-solid center line on Highway 190 at the intersection of Akina Place and struck Rhonda Freedman’s 2018 Nissan Versa head-on. “She was the best aunty. She was the most favorite aunty.”
Freedman said he had “41 unbelievable years” with his wife, 40 of them as her husband.
Freedman owns and operate Sparktacular Inc., a fireworks and professional pyrotechnics company based in Jupiter Beach, Fla.
“We built the company together the last 26 years,” Freedman said. “The reason Rhonda was back in Hawaii was to take care of her mother. She’s an 86-year-old Hawaiian and Filipina woman. And I came back here to take care of her mother. And then the accident happened after I went back to the mainland.”
Rhonda Freedman died about an hour-and-a-half after the 9:18 p.m. collision.
Shoemaker-Hassey wasn’t injured, nor was his front-seat passenger, a 17-year-old girl. He was arrested on suspicion of DUI, negligent homicide, reckless endangering and reckless driving, and later released pending further investigation.
Police and prosecutors have two years to investigate and to press any potential charges against Shoemaker-Hassey.
This year has been a particularly deadly one on the Big Island’s roads.
As of Thursday, there have been 25 official traffic fatalities in 2022, just one less than for the entire year in 2021.
Freedman said his wife was from the “Kahikina bloodline,” with relatives among numerous prominent Hawaiian families in West Hawaii, and a Garso on her Filipina side.
He said she was the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament’s Miss Billfish in the 1970s, placed in numerous pageants — including top three in the Mrs. Hawaii pageant — and was a trained hula dancer.
The Connecticut-born, Miami-bred Freedman and Kona-born Rhonda DePontes met in California, where she was working for a firm that did business with Freedman’s father.
“My father said, ‘You’ve got to meet this girl. This girl looks different, she’s incredible,’” Freedman said. “I asked her out on a date, and from that day on, we never split. We had a great family life. She was a great Christian woman … and believed in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and making her way to God.
“I didn’t know, back then, that I’d have the best thing in my life possible. I was blessed,” he said. “It was a great love story under God.”
Freedman, who grew up Jewish, was baptized as a Christian because of his wife’s example, he said.
The Freedmans have four grown children: Sam, 36; Max, 34; Alanah, 31; and Lou, 28. Lou has a November wedding scheduled, while Alanah is set to be married in April 2023.
“She was looking forward to having grandkids,” Freedman said. “We always said we had a couple of grandkids, but they were our dogs, our three bull terriers. She loved our nieces and nephews, and even the children of friends who weren’t in the family. She was the hanai type, for sure.”
Freedman described his wife as “an amazing mother” and said the precedent was set for her to be a wonderful grandmother, as well.
“She instilled the love of Jesus into all of them from the beginning,” he said. “They love their mother. She taught them to excel but to be true from the heart. She was at every function, school or whatever, for them.
“She was there for them for everything. Everything.”
A celebration of life is scheduled for Sept. 25, Freedman said.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.