The Miracle on Maui: A Stranger’s Encounter with a Dying Boy Leads to Redemption and Transformation

The short version goes something like this…

A man goes to Hawaii to attend his friend’s wedding. He’s a big golfer so he brings his clubs along. That man, though, is an alcoholic. He gets so drunk daily that he never hits a golf ball. In fact, there are several moments from the trip he’ll never recall. 

In the wee hours of one of his last days on the island, he remembers a deep desire he has always had: to see the sun rise over the ocean from the beach. Still drunk from the night before, he grabs a bottle of vodka, puts it in his back pocket, and walks down to the sandy shore. 

As the sun peeks above the waves, and in between pulls of his vodka, he notices a boy down the beach. The boy is fishing as his mom watches. Something about the boy draws the man in. Filled with liquid courage, he approaches the boy’s mother and asks what’s going on. She explains that the young boy is dying of cancer and they are on his Make-A-Wish trip. He always wanted to fish on the beach, so that’s what they’re doing. 

Listen to them on the latest episode of “Quick Start”:

Curious, the man asks if it would be alright for him to talk to the boy. For some reason, the mother says yes. 

As the two converse, something happens. He hears deep wisdom, truth, love, and courage spill out of the boy’s mouth. He sees genuine happiness. He doesn’t remember exactly what was said, but it changed him. It challenged him. The boy talked about Jesus, about life, about his outlook on dying. The man was in awe. 

After their roughly 30-minute conversation, the man walked away convicted. He knew what awaited him if he kept going the direction he was headed. Destruction. So much destruction. Just like he had seen play out in front of him as a child. He wanted to – he needed to – change. 

When he returned from his trip, he gave up alcohol. He got his life in order through pursuing God. He changed dramatically and drastically. It wasn’t easy. But little by little he made progress. Today, he is 12 years sober, a dad, and a successful business owner. All because of a small conversation, with a small boy, on a small stretch of beach in Hawaii. And a big God.

That man is Aaron Palmer, a financial planner from Tacoma, Washington. That boy is Ethan Hallmark, the 13-year-old who died from his cancer in 2014 and is featured in the I Am Second film, “Many Are the Wonders.” 

That was the short version. 

What follows is the full story of how Palmer spent the last year tracking down Hallmark and his family, how exactly that young boy affected him, and an unlikely reunion with the Hallmarks — as well as other details — that are too incredible to call mere chance. 

***

To say Palmer’s life was chaotic growing up would be an understatement. His addict mom was married eight times. Eight times. The revolving relationship door spun enough to make a Kansas tornado jealous. And every one of those men seemed to have two things in common: they were alcoholics and they were abusive. 

“I saw a lot of terrible things,” Palmer told me on a recent afternoon from his home in Tacoma. “My mother was kidnapped when I was a kid. When I was in seventh grade, she was getting beat and I ran out and [her husband at the time] had a gun to her head. So I saw a lot of crazy, terrible, terrible things a child probably shouldn’t see right? It was just chaos, violence, and complete instability.”

That’s putting it mildly. 

Unsurprisingly, Palmer turned to alcohol to cope. It started as a way to numb what he had gone through. But by the end of college, the small pet had grown into an uncontrollable beast. 

“I graduate from college somehow during all this chaos and next thing you know, I’m drinking three or four days a week and I’m starting to have blackouts,” he explains. That continued throughout his 20s. It got so bad that he had maxed out all his credit cards because of regularly paying bar tabs for strangers so he could create a sense of belonging. 

“I was blacking out every single weekend, even getting kicked out of bars,” he says. Then came the DUI. After getting pulled over in front of his apartment, his blood-alcohol level registered a 0.26, over three times the legal limit. 

But not even that was the wake-up call he needed: “I get out [from jail] the next day and what do I do? I go to the bar and start all over.”

The wake-up call would come two months later in November of 2011. Palmer’s friend invited him to his wedding in Maui. But with his credit cards maxed out, he couldn’t afford it. Desperate for that sense of belonging again, though, he opened up a new card and hopped on the plane. 

The memories get a little foggy starting there. “I blacked out every day,” he admits. 

Needless to say, his golf clubs never left his room. But on the second-to-last day of his drunken foray, he decided he would drag himself to the beach to fulfill a longtime desire to see the sun rise over the ocean. 

True to form — and still “buzzed” from the night before — he grabbed a bottle of vodka and stumbled down to the sand. As he watched the sunrise peek through the clouds with empty eyes, he looked down the beach and noticed something: someone was fishing. Curious, he inched closer. And closer. And closer. That’s when he noticed this “someone” was a young boy. Ten years old, to be exact.

“I see him down on the beach, close to the water, and I see a woman taking pictures of him with a real camera,” he recalls. 

With his inhibitions gone and vodka bottle in tow, he struck up a conversation with the woman. He asked why she and the boy were up so early. 

“Well, my son is part of Make-A-Wish Foundation, and this is part of his final wish that was granted to him,” she replied. “He doesn’t have long to live.” 

That’s when something started stirring inside of Palmer. He felt a strong desire to talk to the boy. He didn’t just want to; he needed to. After getting the mother’s permission – something that still baffles him to this day – he began the 30-minute conversation that would change his life. 

“I couldn’t tell you exactly what he said,” Palmer admits. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t remember the essence of the conversation or the effect it had on him. “I saw a boy facing death who had more faith, and more happiness, and more hope than I had in my entire life.” 

“I’m contemplating suicide because of alcoholism and completely depressed, and yet this little boy has cancer that’s going to take his life for sure and he has more hope, faith, and happiness than I do,” he reiterates. 

It was in that moment, he says, that God “slapped” him in the face. 

“You are so selfish. What are you doing with your life? You have been given a life that you could do anything you want with, and here you are drinking it away,” he recalls. 

He left the conversation completely God-smacked. And as he said goodbye to the boy and his mother, he made a decision to start a new journey. A journey focused on the hope the young man showed him. 

Never did he imagine, though, how that journey would eventually lead him right back to that little boy. 

***

When he returned to Tacoma, Palmer followed through on his commitment to turn his life around. He stopped drinking and started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The spark the young fisherman ignited on the beach that day became a flame. He began pursuing God as well, and found purpose and meaning.

“My faith just grew, and grew, and grew, and grew, and grew, as well as my trust in God and His plan,” he says of that season. “I came to understand that Aaron’s not in control anymore.”

November 2023 marked 12 years since Palmer’s conversation on the beach. Twelve years sober. Since then, he got married. He has a son and a daughter. He built a thriving financial planning business and has even performed weddings as an officiant. And he’s been telling his Hawaii story to anyone who will listen. A story of life transformation, of pursuing God, and of a conversation that changed his life. 

In fact, he even chose Hawaii for his wedding five years later because it was “where this boy saved my life.”

But as he’s told the entire story (thousands of times, he says), there’s always been a little piece missing. Maybe as a result of still being drunk, or maybe because he was just so blown away, he never got the young boy’s name. 

“I’ve always just described him as the boy on the beach,” Palmer says. 

In 2023, however, after going through some family struggles that left him hurt, he got a “nudge” from God (through a confidant) to change that — to give “the boy on the beach” a name and to share with the young man’s family the impact the boy had on him.

But how do you find one boy, one family, from 12 years ago when you don’t even know their last name, let alone their first ones? Where do you even begin? Is it even possible? 

He started the only place he could think of: makeawish.com. 

“I went to the main site, and everybody’s got a contact button,” he explains. “So I just hit ‘contact’ and typed in my name and gave a glimpse of the story.” His full email read: 

In 2011 I met a Make-A-Wish Foundation award recipient. I met him on a beach on Maui, it was the beach right next to Ka’anapali Golf course, I was staying at the Royal Lahaina resort and was taking a beach walk very early in the morning. This boy saved my life. His mother told me he had 2 weeks to live and this was his wish, to fish the beaches in Maui, she was taking photos of him. I at the time was struggling with alcoholism and had been drinking very heavily the last 6 months. I met this boy and realized this boy that had 2 weeks to live had more Joy, Hope, and happiness than I did. It was a huge slap in the face by God. That boy helped change my entire perspective on life. That boy saved my life. I have been sober ever since. My sobriety date is 11/28/2011, I met this boy on 11/19/2011. 

I am wondering if there is a way to search Maui trips awarded in November 2011 to help me contact the family of this boy, so I can share my story that this boy saved my life, PLEASE HELP!

He did get a response, but it wasn’t hopeful. And after several email exchanges, he got some devastating news: 

Aloha Aaron, 

[…]Your story is so touching to read and thank you for being vulnerable and sharing with us! After searching our records and working with Make-A-Wish America we found that Ethan passed away in 2013, and his family has not kept in touch with the chapter. After a further search for the parents we’re not sure they’re even living in the same state where he had his wish granted. […]

Still, he begged the organization to keep digging, even calling anyone who would pick up the phone: “Can you just give it a shot?”

About a week or so later, his persistence paid off. 

“One day I get a call from Kim [Elenez], the CEO of Make-A-Wish North Texas,” he explains. She finally delivered the news he had been waiting for. 

“Aaron, we found him,” she said, delivering the three words he had been praying to hear. “His name is Ethan Hallmark. His parents are Rachel and Matt. They have a beautiful family. And this boy was as special as you remember. He has a documentary on him with I Am Second. Before you speak with them, you have to watch this documentary.”

Palmer had never heard of I Am Second – the non-profit that tells stories of life transformation through the lens of faith – before, but he quickly found the documentary (“Many Are the Wonders”) and watched it with his wife three times. With each frame, with each minute, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. As Ethan told his story of radical dependence on Jesus – of making a difference by declaring God’s wonders amidst the most grueling trial you can imagine – Palmer and his wife cried. They watched in awe as Ethan’s parents talked about how their son wasn’t really their son, but rather God’s son. And Palmer finally learned not only the boy’s name, but his full story. 

“I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness, this boy was special,’” he says. Ethan was exactly like he remembered: incredible.

Then came the ending. Palmer wasn’t prepared for what flashed on the screen. 

“At the end of the documentary, it says Ethan passed away September 26, 2014. That’s my birthday,” he says through tears. He cries some more. I cry. We both get chills.

“Only God,” he says excitedly. “Only God could paint this beautiful picture. This crazy picture. And He’s not done, you know?”

No, God wasn’t. 

Palmer quickly reached out to Matt and Rachel Hallmark, the latter of which he now knows is the mother from the story he’s told countless times. As he told them the story, they too were in awe. In fact, they were so moved, they did something Palmer never expected: they invited him and his family to come stay with them for a night over Christmas break. 

As it happens, Palmer’s in-laws live about three hours from where the Hallmarks now call home in Texas, and they were already planning on visiting. Another “God thing,” as Palmer describes it. So on December 27, 2023, after a long drive, the Palmers’ and the Hallmarks’ worlds collided – again. And it was about as special as you could imagine. 

“We meet their four beautiful children, we have dinner, and I get to share with their children how their brother changed my life,” he recalls. “And how I have a beautiful family all because Rachel said ‘yes’ that day, and then Ethan spoke life into me.”

“Because of that boy,” he continues, “I can trust in God and see life differently. I can break the chains. And now I know his name. Now I know.”

But what about the Hallmarks? What did it mean to them? 

“We’ve always been open with regard to Ethan’s story, Ethan’s faith, and, most importantly, the ministry that God bestowed upon Ethan and allowed him to have and how God sustained,” Matt tells me from his car while traveling for work. “It’s incredible to see the impact that God had on Ethan’s life and how that impact continues to reverberate in others’ lives.”

“It’s just another way that God has encouraged us,” he adds. “To hear Aaron’s wife say, ‘Thank you so much for your son and who you raised; I wouldn’t have a husband, our kids wouldn’t have a father if it wasn’t for them meeting on the shore.’ That is truly impactful.”

“We can talk about somebody touching somebody’s life, but until you see it, until you witness it, until you know that person you don’t have an ability to understand how that person touched lives.”

Still, what about the question that has always stuck with Palmer: Why did Rachel say “yes” that day when he asked to talk to Ethan?

Matt chuckles: “That’s not something Rachel would ever normally do. But she knew that, in this case, there was a reason to allow him to let him do it. The Holy Spirit was just impressing upon her to allow Aaron to do it.”

It’s that simple. And that amazing. But it gets a little more amazing. See, at the time, Ethan didn’t have two weeks to live, as Palmer understood. In fact, Matt explains, Ethan was in remission and hadn’t even had his first relapse. The Hallmarks were as hopeful as they had ever been. But that’s not what Palmer heard. And as Matt tells it, that’s actually a testament to how God used the conversation. 

“He was hearing what he needed to hear in order to put his life in order, in order for him to realize where he was at, and hear the words that God had for him,” Matt explains.

“It’s certainly a God story behind it all.”

***

As Palmer finishes telling me his story, he recounts one last detail. One last incredible instance of how God weaved his and Ethan’s stories together. How he weaves all our stories together. 

Included in Ethan’s documentary is video of him fishing. He loved to fish. You could say Ethan’s fishing addiction is what led to his and Palmer’s meeting on that November morning in 2011. After watching the documentary, seeing the video, and even seeing the pictures at the end of the film showing more of Ethan’s fishing adventures, Palmer sent a series of photos to Matt. They were pictures he took of Ethan the morning they met, when he was awe-struck at the little boy in front of him. 

In response, Matt sent back a single photo. It was a picture taken from the opposite angle. Same beach. Same day. Same clouds. Same time. Two people who just had to capture the same moment because of how incredible it was. Two perspectives. Two worlds. One story. 

Every year, Palmer returns to the exact spot where he met Ethan. He’s taken family members there, his children, friends even. It’s a sort of pilgrimage to celebrate how God used “the boy on the beach” to reach him. The boy he now knows as Ethan Hallmark. And it’s a testament to how God can use anyone, at any time, to heal any situation. Even the most hopeless.

“There’s a ripple effect that’s flowing through my family in my life because of Ethan,” Palmer says. “And it’s just not done.”

He’s right again. 

On May 11 of this year, Palmer and the Hallmarks will be guest speakers at the annual Make-A-Wish North Texas gala to tell their story. A story that started on a beach, with a boy, and is still being written.

“It’s just not done.”

Jon Seidl is a contributing writer. For the last decade, Seidl has been telling stories. In fact, he has written over 6,000 of them, first after helping start a top-50 news site, then as the editor-in-chief of the popular non-profit I Am Second, and most recently as the head of a special digital media product for actor Kirk Cameron. He’s now the head of digital operations for an opinion and analysis network.