Debra:
Yes. Well, I am of Hawaiian roots, and my family—my predecessors, my ancestors—came from the Big Island of Hawaii, and that’s where my great-great-great-great-grandfather, you know, he developed a big ranch there. And so that’s just kind of the starter, really.

But after retiring from the United States Air Force, I chose Cheyenne, Wyoming, because it’s just nice and small. It’s quiet, because my final station where I was at was at the Pentagon, in the broadcast studio there. And it was the best job in the worst city ever. Incredible traffic. Everything’s just ridiculously expensive. Yeah, it wasn’t my vibe. It wasn’t my style.

Yeah. And I thought, I want to go smaller—much smaller—where I’m not always riding a bus or the rail system, the Metro that they have there. It’s just not my thing anymore. So I’m going to go to a smaller town. And Cheyenne wasn’t at the top of my list. I kind of had many choices. But after all consideration—and no income tax—this was the place to be.

Abdalrahim:
What were other considerations?

Debra:
Oh, there were places in Texas. There was a place in Tennessee. There was a place in Florida—too many bugs there. Let’s see, Washington State—too much rain. But really, this—I like the centrality, the centrality of it. The fact that it’s considered flyover country—good, ignore me, that’s fine. That’s the—I want to retire, and I want to get on with my next career. So that’s why I chose Cheyenne.

Well, so while working here, I had many jobs. I was supposed to take a position at the CBS news station. And when I got here, the director who I was supposed to replace decided not to retire. And so I thought, well, I could be real grumpy and start a kerfuffle, or I could just get on with my life—because I have skills. It’s not just videography, it’s not just lighting, it’s not just whatever studio work. I’ll just get on with it.

And so, before joining the military, I was—worked in retail in the mall, one of those teens that worked in the mall. So I just started working whatever was open. It didn’t matter. I was going to find my new career.

So I did. I just happened to be on the Air Force base here. Now, I didn’t retire because it had an Air Force base—it just happened to all work out. I worked at the base library and the base museum. And through that, I started researching just different ethnicities that live in Wyoming.

There’s actually a book that was going to be scrapped and thrown away out of the library—they call [that] "books they’re going to pull." And I said, “Can you hold that back so I can read that?” And it was all about the ethnicities that have—that moved to Wyoming State through hundreds of years. It was a very interesting book. It essentially had to do with the Western migration.

So while researching all that, I tripped on over this little obscure website, also about Wyoming, and I found a footnote about my family’s ranch on the Big Island of Hawaii.

So here I am in Wyoming—Cheyenne, Wyoming—never thought about [there] being any Hawaiian mention. So here’s this website, and it’s talking about the Parker Ranch.

Well, what I did was, I dug a little deeper, and it talked about Cheyenne Frontier Days. And a Hawaiian cowboy named Ikua Purdy. And he was—he competed in 1908 in steer roping and won. He came over as kind of just a grandstanding ploy by—he had a manager from Hawaii—because he was a grand champion in Hawaii.

So he came over to just show what he could do. And he became—he was actually in competition with a favored steer roper here in Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1908. He used a borrowed horse, excuse me, of course. And he had his own rope, made out of leather—very heavy. I have felt these ropes. They’re extremely heavy.

So he won the steer roping championship in 1908. It created quite a sensation. I have lots of books. I brought material with me. But it became an international news thing. So, as a Hawaiian, I was interested in this.

And you know, my daddy, of course, told me about our ranch and our predecessors on the Big Island. And he told me about the paniolo—they’re called paniolo, cowboys on Parker Ranch.

And so I have all these books and genealogies, because I wanted to see, where is this Ikua Purdy from the Parker Ranch? So I started digging, and I’m still in Cheyenne, and this is starting to all gel together.

Well, guess what? I found a genealogy book that says I’m related to Ikua Purdy. Yes. Well, okay. So he was—everybody married a Hawaiian royalty from the King Kamehameha clan—we’ll just call it [that]. And there were lots of little princesses and people part of the royal family of Hawaii. And so we’re like distant cousins, and I found the genealogy that proves it.

And then people started writing books about Ikua Purdy. And here I am in Cheyenne. Who would have ever thought that me, wanting to retire from the Air Force and be invisible and just find a small city that’s quiet and live my life, right? And so here I am. And that’s kind of my story.

Abdalrahim:
Wow, that’s—that’s impressive.

Debra:
It’s—well, it’s impressive that he won this championship, which was considered like the world rodeo grand champion steer roper. And he never came back to defend his title. He was like me: “I just want a quiet life back on the islands.” And that’s what he did.

He ended up being the foreman on a ranch [in] Maui, and—but he started on the Parker Ranch, because he’s part of the family. It’s quite convoluted—you know how genealogies go.

But so here I am. Didn’t know—I know my Hawaiian ancestry—but, you know, Daddy didn’t talk about Ikua specifically. I found out when I was working in the library and the museum. So that’s my story. Little Cheyenne, and little me wanting to be quiet, and here I find this wonderful family connection that’s really. And so I’m just proud of that.

Abdalrahim:
Yeah, you should be. You should be. It’s amazing. Love it so much. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

Debra:
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.