Q. What's next for Pearlridge's 55-acre property?

A. We cater to the O'ahu market, the Leeward side mostly, and the military. We're not a tourist destination, don't want to be. We're doing a really, really good job, but I think we can do it better — getting our merchants on board with customer service through merchant meetings. We're getting some better furniture for the common areas in about eight weeks. We've got Big City Diner under construction in the Pearlridge Office Center, the eight-story office building.

Q. Do you handle a lot of complaints from customers?

A: All the time. Everything that anyone has an opinion about comes to me. We can't afford to lose one person, because word of mouth is what the whole world works off of and it's important to me that everyone have a good thing to say about Pearlridge.

Q. How do you encourage merchants to improve customer service when they can barely staff their shifts because of Hawai'i's tight job market?

A. That's a big problem. It's a constant battle. I don't really have an answer. But we try to tell them to make the people the best they can be through training and communicating your expectations. The local mom-and-pops are just trying to get a body in there. These are the kinds of things we're going to talk about in the future.

Q. You've been in Hawai'i six months but took a circuitous route to get here.

A. I went to school at North Texas State on a golf scholarship and I got sick. I had this very strange illness where every time I played intramural basketball and got pushed or hit, I got these nosebleeds that turned into nose hemorrhages. That summer, I went to work at a steel mill in Gary, Ind., and had a couple of occurrences at work. I spent the next three months in the hospital. They finally found a tumor in my nasal pharynx area. Blood would fill up like a balloon and finally pop, thus the nosebleeds. My whole life turned upside down at 19. I was really rather directionless at the time and I was accepted at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Q. How did you end up in Utah?

A. We had always gone out West skiing, so ... I wanted to go somewhere out West just for the summer. I loaded up my car and drove out to Salt Lake City to the University of Utah and fell in love with the place and stayed there on and off for 10 years. In August 2004, I was living in Washington, D.C., when my son and I took trip to the West Coast. I found a car in Denver on eBay and we took a big loop through the whole coast of California. My son was 17 and he said, "When I see you with your friends in California and Oregon, I don't think you fit in in the East Coast." One of my friends (is) a headhunter and she said, "What about Hawai'i?" When I got off the plane, I loved it. I told everyone I wouldn't make a decision until I got back home. That didn't last long.

Q. You've made a couple of references to your summers spent in the steel mill.

A. My dad came from very humble beginnings and he wanted me to know what it's like to earn a dollar. The workers thought we had this attitude that we were college kids and we thought we would be running the mill some day. One day, somebody had taken a forklift and hit these drums of chemicals that ruptured and burst, and there was 4 inches of sludge all over the warehouse floor. People just scurried. My boss said, "Shovel that up and put it back in the container." I did it without complaining. They realized I worked hard. It showed me I needed to be flexible and understanding.

Q. How has your transition gone from adjusting from the East Coast to Hawai'i?

A. I have tried to convey to the people around me that I'm learning, too, and I'm going to make mistakes, and you need to help me with that. I want to know what's right and what's wrong. I have been so consumed by the move that I forgot my secret weapon. Back in 1989, in Columbia, Md., I made milk shakes at a staff meeting as a real team-building thing. I got more feedback on that than any other staff meeting. I've done it once here and I had mango and pineapple, trying to localize it. I have an apron and a little soda jerk cap. I love doing it.

I was here three days when I let a bus in in front of me and the bus driver gave me a shaka, and I said, "Oh, I got one of those things." I've tried to return the favor and pulled over for a guy who was broken down on the H-3. I let him use my cell phone and ended up getting pulled into the whole family dynamic.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.