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Hawaiians Find an Unlikely Eden in Las Vegas

``It is because he has a job — wave-pool director — that lets him live in a nice suburb, in a house big enough for him, his wife, their 19-year-old son and any other relatives who visit.

``…Las Vegas, he says, has given him material comfort he could never have attained back home. Mr. Mokuahi, a muscular, dark-haired man with a bristly mustache, misses Hawaii — "the best place in the world to be," he says matter-of-factly. But he is not complaining.

``Neither, it seems, are the tens of thousands of other Hawaiians who have joined him in this casino boomtown. A broad swath of the Hawaiian middle class — hotel workers, retired police officers, teachers and, increasingly, nurses and other professionals — abandoned its economically depressed home state in the last 10 years, seeking better jobs, cheaper houses and easier lives here.

``This stream of migrants has merged with a deluge of visitors — Hawaiians make 300,000 trips here every year — to transform Las Vegas into perhaps the most Hawaiian city on the mainland.

``…The irony of pilgrims streaming out of a tropical paradise into the desert, like the Rapture in reverse, was not lost on many expatriates interviewed here.

``But they said the harsh facts of island life — high unemployment and taxes, a slumping tourist economy, staggering housing costs — justified the move. Couples can hold three jobs, many said, and never afford a house in Hawaii, where the median house price is $345,000. Nevada's median is $152,000.

``…But Robert Parker, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who has written about the social costs of the southern Nevada boom, said people should consider the downside of moving here.

``He ticked off a litany of Las Vegas pathologies: the nation's highest suicide rates among teenagers and the elderly; the highest per capita pedestrian fatality rate; severe air pollution; rampant asthma…”

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