Lori Kalaaukahi Of Aloha Nui Counseling Provides Therapy With An ‘Aloha Spirit’ 

Licensed Clinical Social Worker Lori Kalaaukahi-Boone specializes in mental health therapy for teens, adults & couples. Her office is in Zephyrhills, but she also offers Telehealth appointments. (Photos by Charmaine George) 

In 2011, Lori Kalaaukahi-Boone was ready to get off the island of Oahu in Hawaii, where she was born, had been raised and lived her whole life. 

She had been working as a medical assistant and a nurse’s aide, and was struggling with mental health issues. She wanted to explore the world, so she did something unconventional for a single mom in her mid-30s. 

Lori enlisted in the Army. 

“At 34, I just barely made the age cutoff,” she says. “Growing up on a small island can become claustrophobic, and I felt like I was going in circles.” 

She asked her parents to care for her two kids, Tihani (then 17) and Ramsay (then 7), and she headed out to boot camp at Fort Jackson, SC. She found herself in basic training with kids just barely older than her older daughter back home, taking orders from people much younger than she was. 

After serving four years in the Army, she was living in Tennessee and was able to use GI Bill benefits to earn both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Social Work from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville. 

At first, she thought she would be a nurse, but she was struggling in the program. Then, a friend who was a social worker told her about his job. 

“It just resonated with me, and I knew this is what I needed to do,” she says. “When I changed my program, everything started flowing naturally, and I knew I was supposed to be a therapist.” 

She graduated with her Bachelor’s degree in 2018 and her Master’s in 2020. Now, she is credentialed as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), which means she is qualified to provide services independently. 

When she first came to Florida, Lori worked with an agency in Clearwater providing community mental health. She helped people who were homeless and struggling with addiction, as well as many other issues. 

But now, this Wesley Chapel resident is tackling her dream of having her own practice, which she opened in Zephyrhills in July 2023. She provides teens, adults and couples with mental health care via virtual and in-office appointments. 

She says she named her practice Aloha Nui Counseling Services to embrace her Hawaiian heritage, and what is important to her in her relationships with her clients. 

“‘Aloha nui’ means ‘Take good care,’ or ‘Lots of love,’” she says. “It’s basically our version of southern hospitality.” 

She says it’s important to her that she incorporates that spirit with all of her clients. 

“In my culture, we’re brought up to help others, love others and care for others,” Lori says. “I wanted to implement that here in my practice.” 

EMDR Therapy 

Lori says that, as a former soldier herself, she is especially passionate about helping those who have experienced any kind of trauma to process their issues and heal. 

One way she does this is a specialized trauma therapy called EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing. 

Lori explains that EMDR is a well-known modality that uses eye movements to help people process trauma in a healthy way. 

“It helps your brain to process the images in your head in a healthy manner so it doesn’t get stuck,” she says. “It’s almost like how eating too much food can cause it to get stuck, and we start choking. images can get stuck in our brains, too.” 

She says EMDR puts a patient into a similar state to REM (rapid eye movement, a state of deep sleep) and she installs positive cognitions to help her patients process their trauma. 

“Once it’s completed,” she says, “you still have these images, but it’s no longer accompanied by heavy emotions.” 

Lori has completed 60 hours of training to be qualified to practice this modality. She also has used it under supervision to complete her training so she is well qualified to help those who need to work through traumatic issues and find healing from those difficult events or times of their lives. 

Lori definitely also has a heart for those who have served in the military, as not only a veteran herself, but also as the daughter of a veteran, and now the spouse of a veteran, too. 

When Lori was stationed and living in Tennessee, her parents loved to visit her there. She says it was her father who inspired her to join the Army. She knew it would “knock his socks off” for her to join, after his own 36-year military career. With the low prices relative to the cost of living in Hawaii, and the southern hospitality that reminded them of home, they relocated to Tennessee. 

Lori’s husband Barry Boone is retired from the Army and brought the family to Florida to work as a military recruiter. Tihani now lives in Hawaii, where she is married with four daughters. She is a nurse who earned her Bachelor’s degree in 2020, the same year her mom got her Master’s. 

Ramsay still lives with Lori’s parents in Tennessee and is in school to become a fashion designer, and her 12-year-old daughter Teveah is home-schooled. Barry has three adult children of his own, as well. 

With all of her experience raising children, as a single mom and as part of a blended family, she feels she has no problem relating to adolescents and understands what they’re going through. 

She encourages teenagers who are struggling or parents who see their children suffering from mental health issues to reach out to her. 

“It’s okay to not be okay,” Lori says. “Mental health is not something to be afraid of. Let’s normalize mental issues in the same way medical issues are normalized.” 

Aloha Nui Counseling offers a free initial consultation. While Lori is happy to see patients in person at her office in Zephyrhills, she also offers Telehealth appointments for anyone who prefers to meet that way. 

She works with clients who have insurance to pay the cost of counseling and those who self-pay. 

Bonita Ashe, a colleague of Lori’s who is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, says the following about Lori, which was published on Lori’s profile at PsychologyToday.com. 

“Lori has an authentic style and warm demeanor and she will immediately calm an anxious spirit,” Bonita says. “If you need a kind and compassionate therapist, your search ends here. Lori is EMDR trained and a therapist I would trust with any client.” 

To schedule a free consultation, call Lori at (808) 342-1042, email her at LLorik808@ gmail.com, or visit AlohaNuiService.com. Aloha Nui Counseling is located at 5344 9th St., Suite 105, in downtown Zephyrhills, and appointments are offered in person or via Telehealth. 

Pasco Restores Public Access To Accela System Shortly After Shutting It Off 

It sort of felt like something out of a Hollywood movie: A fresh, new face arrives on the scene and quickly captures the imagination of the public, only to have the government pull the rug out from under them and their many “fans.” 

But, this was no movie and, thankfully, the rug in this case has seemingly been neatly replaced and the young “starlet” and her supporting cast are back to doing what they do best — keeping people informed about new development projects throughout Pasco County. 

Wait, what? 

Yes, it’s true. The fresh face in this case is Kelly Gilroy of the super-popular Pasco County Development & Growth Updates (PCGDU) Facebook page (which I discussed in last issue’s page 3 editorial, too) — who admits she feared just this type of retribution from either the county government, developers or both — and the “villains” at least appear to be one unnamed member of the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners (BOC) and Pasco County Planning Commission member and civil engineer Jon Moody, who at the Planning Commission’s meeting on Sept. 6 said, “You shouldn’t believe everything you read on Facebook. Ms. Gilroy spreads false information.” 

Moody was referring to a post Kelly had made on Sept. 3, where she said that a land owner whose property is located inside the Northeast Pasco Rural Protection Overlay District was seeking to rezone their property from agricultural to high-density apartments and 1.5 million sq. ft. of warehouse and commercial space and was attempting to remove said property from the Protection District. Moody said that Kelly’s assertion was false. Whether it was true or not, that’s a discussion for another day, but it appears to be what set off a chain reaction of craziness. Or was it? 

Less than a week later, on Sept. 12, Kelly sent me a Facebook message (that she also posted on the PCGDU Facebook page) that said, “Pasco County has taken the extraordinary step of blocking public access on their Accela Citizens Portal (to) all pre-application developer site plans future and past because of the info I post in my group. Despite being public records, they literally paid their software vendor (Accela) to remove the search function from the public-facing website, apparently at the request of a county commissioner. Now, to get the same info, they (Pasco) require an “Open Records” request (to the county’s staff), which they delay responding to and charge fees to retrieve.” 

Were the two events — Moody’s “call out” of Kelly and the removal from the public access of all pre-app development information — related? And, which of the five county commissioners made the request? Is it a violation of state law to allow electronic access to public records and then take it away, while still allowing governmental officials and developers to continue to have access to that info? 

Consider this: Chapter 119.01 of the Florida Statutes (the General State Policy on Public Records), Subsections (e) and (f) clearly state that: 

“(e) Providing access to public records by remote electronic means is an additional method of access that agencies should strive to provide to the extent feasible. If an agency provides access to public records by remote electronic means, such access should be provided in the most cost-effective and efficient manner available to the agency providing the information. 

“(f) Each agency that maintains a public record in an electronic recordkeeping system shall provide to any person, pursuant to this chapter, a copy of any public record in that system which is not exempted by law from public disclosure.” 

And, after I had given Kelly those mad props for helping us lock onto the updates on her page that affect Wesley Chapel, and the fact that our editorial researcher and correspondent Joel Provenzano admits that the county’s Accela site was where he was getting so much of the background info for his stories, I vowed to help Kelly get to the bottom of this unfortunate situation. 

So, while she talked about possible lawsuits and injunctions to restore the access, I started calling county commissioners to find out if they knew which commissioner initiated the removal of the public’s access to Accela, and why this seemingly drastic step had been taken by the county. More than one of the commissioners I spoke with said that no only did they not know about which of them initiated it, they weren’t happy that they weren’t consulted or asked to vote on such a proposal before the public access was taken away. 

To continue my earlier analogy, before I got very far into my investigation into the “whodunit,” in stepped Dist. 5 Comm. Jack Mariano, who publicly stated that the public’s access to Accela needed to be reinstated “as quickly as possible” and his legislative assistant Sonya Walling put that demand in writing: 

“Comm. Mariano has requested staff to reopen the access to Pre-Application items on the Accela portal as soon as possible. Please reach out again if the PREAPPS are not available by Monday (Sept. 23).” 

Around the same day that email was made available, an unnamed admin on the PCDGU page said, “We sincerely thank everyone who contacted their commissioners about this. Hopefully, we can all move forward. We also learned that the county may repeal or waive the requirement for developers to submit a pre-application proposal altogether at some point in the future in an effort to streamline the application process [since, according to one commissioner, not all Florida counties require it and the process takes up a lot of staff time] and instead only accept site proposals the developers intend on actually moving through the permitting/zoning process. 

“Regardless, this group’s primary purpose will remain the sharing of raw information about proposed development, zoning and growth in Pasco. 

“If this is true and access is restored, we have no animus towards the county and will move on and try to keep the group non-partisan and non-political. Thank you.” 

Fade to black 

“And cut and print it!” 

3 Natives Opens At The Shops At Wiregrass! 

After sampling two of his tasty sandwiches on my first visit, I’m hopeful that franchise owner/operator Rick Orosco can succeed with his 3 Natives franchise in a location in The Shops at Wiregrass where multiple other similar concepts have failed — next to Macy’s (between Fabletics and Zales Jewelers), at 28211 Paseo Dr. 

3 Natives, started in 2013 by three Florida natives in Tequesta (on the east coast of South Florida, near Jupiter Inlet), although only Tequesta local Anthony Bambino is credited as the founder on 3Natives.com. 

According to the website, Bambino traveled throughout Southern California as a salesperson and “saw little juice bars all over the place. He wanted to bring that type of healthy and quick food (and beverages) to South Florida to see if it would work.” 

The website also notes that, “What started out as a 900-sq.-ft. juice bar has quickly grown into 26+ stores in Florida and Oklahoma,” with more to come. 

Orosco says that his is the first 3 Natives franchise in the Tampa Bay area, with the closest stores in Lakewood Ranch and Orlando. He also says that the simple 3 Natives menu — featuring fresh juices and smoothies, açai bowls, sandwiches and salads has already been “very well received” by his growing list of customers in just a few weeks of being open. 

Rick loves giving away samples of those juices — “Lean n’ Green,” “The Beet” and “Easy Greens”(left photo) — to any and all newcomers, “because we press and bottle them right here in the store.” I’ve never been a veggie-based juice guy, but I did enjoy the sweetest of the three options (Lean n’ Green) after sampling all of them. 

I’ve yet to try the smoothies, salads or açai bowls, but I will say that I enjoyed both the tuna melt on tasty multigrain bread and especially, the hot, pressed Hercules wrap (with chicken breast, spinach, purple cabbage, pico, croutons, parmesan & Caesar dressing) — very yummy and obviously super fresh, too. 

For more info, visit 3Natives.com, call (813) 838-6491 or stop in and tell Rick I sent you! —GN 

Helene Update!

Hurricane Helene has been upgraded to a Category 3 storm, with sustained winds of up to 120 mph. That’s the bad news, especially for Tallahassee and the rest of the Big Bend area of Florida. The good news for people living in New Tampa and Wesley Chapel — 25-30 miles or more from the nearest coastline — is that as of 4 p.m., Helene has been a non-event for us.

But, please — don’t assume that the storm is over or that our area isn’t going to suffer any effects from it. We already have had wind gusts of 40 mph or so and not only has the storm not yet come close to bypassing us, it also is HUGE!, with tropical storm-force winds extending out more than 300 miles from its center. As Helene passes our latitude 100+ miles out in the Gulf, we are definitely going to get hit with strong tropical storm winds (up to 73 mph) and periods of strong rain that likely will knock out power in at least some of our communities. Thankfully, Helene is moving quickly (at 20 mph or more), so it won’t be a huge rain event for us (like Debby was), but there will still be enough water to cause significant flooding in areas prone to pooling water. And yes, the storm’s path can still tick a little to the east, which would increase our area’s possible impacts.

You also should be aware that unless you know how deep the water is on a road if you are driving through it, you need to please proceed with extreme caution, especially if you’re in an electric vehicle — as the batteries can catch fire. If you lose power and have a portable generator, please never run that generator inside your home or garage. And of course, as with any major storm, beware of downed trees and especially power lines. We have seen this kind of damage in the past, without one of the largest hurricanes ever to hit the Gulf going by, so please continue to be mindful of possible local impacts from this storm.

Photo is a screenshot from meteorologist Denis Phillips of ABC Action News.

Marc Price, aka ‘Skippy’ From ‘Family Ties,’ To Visit SideSplitters At The Grove Sept. 27! 

Stand-up comic & actor Marc Price today (below left) and (above) as “Skippy” on “Family Ties” (with Michael J. Fox). Price brings his stand-up show to Sidesplitters at The Grove in Wesley Chapel for one night only — Friday, September 27. (Photos are from IJoke.com) 

One of the things I love about my job is that I have gotten to meet — and interview — a little more than my fair share of famous people — from sports celebrities like Pete Sampras, Wade Boggs and the late, great Lee Roy Selmon to entertainers like Tom Petty and actress Kathy Bates to public figures like former Vice-President Mike Pence, General Norman Schwartzkopf and yes, Saddebrook Resort founder Tom Dempsey. 

But, I was surprised — and a little starstruck — to receive a phone call a few months ago from Marc Price, the actor, writer and stand-up comic who played Irwin “Skippy” Handelman on the hit NBC-TV show “Family Ties” from 1982-89. And, while Marc may not be the most famous person I’ve interviewed, his character — the best friend of star Michael J. Fox’s Alex P. Keaton — is someone with whom I felt a kindred spirit. I also was a little nerdy in high school, wore glasses until I finally got contact lenses at age 14 and my closest friends were always smarter and more adept at “getting the girl” than I was. 

Our first conversation was very brief, but Marc told me then that he was coming to perform at Sidesplitters at The Grove in Wesley Chapel and would call me again to try to help promote his one-night-only show — which is scheduled for Friday, September 27, at 7 p.m. 

And, he was true to his word. Marc called me a few days before we went to press with this issue and we had a great conversation, which was a stroll down memory lane for both of us — as I realized that, when compared with him, I’ve really hardly met anyone. 

“My father and mother were both in show business,” Marc told me. “My dad was a ‘Borscht Belt’ comedian in the resorts of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York from the 1930s through the early ‘80s. He performed under the name ‘Al Bernie’ and he did his stand-up routines frequently on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’ ‘The Mike Douglas Show’ and ‘Merv Griffin.’ My mom was a night club singer and recording artist who went by the stage name ‘Joy Mann.’” 

He adds, “My dad loved show business. My mom hated show business…and she hated my dad.” 

His parents split up when Marc was going through his formative years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and he says he had to make a choice: either stay in New York and live with his mom, “who wanted me to go to Cornell, have a family and follow in the footsteps of my doctor stepfather, that sort of thing. Or, I could move to Hollywood with my dad, hang out at The Comedy Store and try to be in showbiz. So really…my mom’s plan never stood a chance.” 

When they moved to California, Marc says, “My dad’s goal was to make it on a sitcom — and that wouldn’t have been absurd ten years before that because they were using people his age in the ‘60s and ‘70s. One of my dad’s best friends was Phil Foster, who played Laverne’s grumpy dad (Frank DeFazio) on ‘Laverne & Shirley.’ So, it wasn’t a crazy idea that my dad could get a part on a sitcom.” 

But, he adds, “By the time I moved out there with him, there was a shift on TV sitcoms to only young people who would become big stars. ‘Family Ties’ was a great example of that — it was about a family but it was really focused on the kids. And, it was very clear early in the show that he (Fox) was the breakout superstar of the show. And I think we all appreciated it.” 

Marc credits Foster for helping him land the part of Skippy. 

“Uncle Phil brought me to Paramount Studios one day and asked me, “Do you want to watch how we make ‘Laverne & Shirley’ and ‘Happy Days?’ And I was watching them figuring out how to make that physical comedy work and it just blew my mind.” 

He says he, “always knew I wanted to be a stand-up comedian, but here was this whole new world — acting — and he could see it in my eyes and said, ‘Hey, you wanna come back and watch this all week?’ If any of the security people gives you a hard time, you just tell them that you’re Phil Foster’s nephew.’” 

But then, Marc says, “I started wandering around the studio and was on the set of ‘Bosom Buddies’ and Tom Hanks came over to juggle and do his shtick for me. And, it was only a few years later when he was on ‘Family Ties’ (as “Uncle Ned”) on the same set as me. Same thing with ‘Mork & Mindy’ and ‘Taxi.’ I got to watch them all getting made, watched the process.” 

Because of that experience, he says, “I’d like to think that a couple of years later, when I was auditioning for ‘Family Ties,’ I was a lot more comfortable on set than the average 13- or 14-year-old. Sure, I was nervous, but it wasn’t like a complete freak-out. It kind of felt like home.” 

Marc says that one of the best things about being on the show was watching Fox just explode as a mega-star. “Michael was always super-cool to me and to this day, he remains an inspiration,” he says. “So, we raise money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation at every stop on our tour because I believe that I might not even be on tour if it wasn’t for him. People can go to TeamFox.org if they want to make a donation for a really great cause — Parkinson’s disease research.” 

About His Stand-Up Show 

Marc says his comedy “follows in the footsteps of my dad. I would hang out backstage at his shows when we lived in New York and I met so many famous comics and actors — including George Burns, Joey Bishop, you know, the old-school greats, I even pitched Milton Berle a joke before I was 12 that he used in his stand-up act.” 

But then, when he and his dad moved to L.A., “There was a Comedy Store near where we lived. This wasn’t the famous Comedy Store on Sunset Blvd., because it was hard for a kid under age 14 to get into, but the one in Westwood, near UCLA, which was for those college kids, so they didn’t serve hard alcohol, just wine, beer and food, and you could get in at any age, like a restaurant.” 

He also remembered that when “Family Ties” was on the air, “none of the stand-up guys who went on to become the biggest sitcom and TV stars in history even had a TV show yet — Jerry Seinfeld, Drew Carey, Jay Leno, Paul Reiser and the list goes on. Yes, Seinfeld and Leno were the best-known stand-up comics in the country. And yes, they were famous, but Jay didn’t host ‘The Tonight Show’ yet and Jerry didn’t have a sitcom. And I was working doing stand-up with these guys and they wanted to know about sitcoms, about my (other) world. They gravitated towards me.” 

He adds, “And I got to meet and hang out with all of the comics on the circuit at that time — Andrew Dice Clay, Sam Kinison, Tim Allen, Jim Carrey. Jim was a few years older than me but he was the youngest guy working regularly at the Comedy Store. The host the first night I met Jim, my friend Freddy Asparagus, introduced us and said, “Marc, I want you to meet Jim. He’s young, too, but we expect big things from him. So, I guess he was right.” 

He says that because his influences in comedy were so varied — from Milton Berle to Sam Kinison — “I don’t think you can say I’m ‘like’ any other stand-up, maybe to my own detriment. I’m not a very specific comedian, I’m kind of all over the place. There are parts of my show that I like to think are smart and parts that I think are silly. And there are parts that are crazy, wacky, jokey, and there are parts where I deal with my true life and things that are very real to me. It’s like what some people say about the weather — if you don’t like something, wait a few minutes and it’ll change.” 

Marc did just a little of his act for me. “I love Florida because I live in L.A., where when you’re in your 50s, you’re a dinosaur. But then, I go to Florida and I hear, ‘Oh…spring chicken.’” 

He admits he also enjoys a lot of today’s young comics, “Even though none of them know who I am.” When I mentioned that I just saw Taylor Tomlinson in Vegas, he said, “I’ve been trying to get on that show she does — ‘After Midnight’ — because they mix it up. They actually have folks from my world on it, too.” 

In fact, he says, “I was actually on CBS in that exact time slot — 12:30 weeknights — but for only one week. It was when Pat Sajak was an epic failure as the big competition for Johnny Carson. So then, they tried something different called ‘The Midnight Hour,’ where they had a different host each week for eleven weeks as a summer replacement. One of those hosts was Bill Maher, and CBS should have picked him up, but they missed on him. And then, I got the eleventh — and final — week, at about age 19. When those shows aired, we were up against David Letterman. At the end of my week, the network executives asked me, ‘What do you think of this David Letterman?’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding? He’s amazing!’ So, I like to think that I got him that job.” 

For tickets to see Marc Price at Sidesplitters at The Grove (6333 Wesley Grove Blvd., in the B&B Theaters, Theater #7), visit SideSplittersComedy.com or call (813) 723-2170. For more info about Marc Price, visit IJoke.com.Â