Army of Aloha

Photo by Lawrence Tabudlo

Ask Maj. Troy Trimmer, and he won’t just tell you about the origins of the Christmas classic Silver Bells, he’ll sing it (and the man can carry a tune).

The divisional commander for The Salvation Army Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Division leans in and croons the opening lines: “City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style … on every street corner you’ll hear silver bells, silver bells.”

The connection, he explains, is the iconic red kettles and ringing bells that The Salvation Army has stationed on street corners every holiday season for more than a century.

It’s the kind of moment that captures everything about Trimmer: warm, disarming and always circling back to the mission. And as The Salvation Army Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Division marks 130 years of service to the community, that mission feels as vital, and as personal, as ever.

Trimmer’s own story with The Salvation Army began far from the islands. A Wyoming native, he found his Christian faith at 19 and began looking for a church that would meet people wherever they were. He found his answer in The Salvation Army.

“I felt Salvation Army to be the church that had the greatest opportunity to reach all walks of humanity; it reaches all gamuts,” he says. “Because we love God, we want to love on others, whatever walk of life they’re in.”

That calling took him to Santa Cruz as a youth worker — “from skull bandits in the back pocket to dreadlocks and rasta,” he recalls with a laugh — and eventually to officers’ training college.

His first appointment after ordination landed him in ʻAiea in 1990 at The Salvation Army Leeward Corps. It was there that he met a praise and worship pianist named Anie Galario, a Moanalua High graduate who had grown up in the islands. The two married in June 1993, and The Salvation Army promptly sent them back to the mainland.

After serving together for 30 years in places like Colorado, Oregon, California and Utah, The Salvation Army sent the Trimmers home in January 2023 to lead the Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Division, which spans Hawaiʻi, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. For Anie, it was a return to the islands of her childhood. For Troy, it was a homecoming of a different kind, back to the place where their love story began.

“Though she’ll probably say it was just because this dumb nosy haole kept interrupting her life,” he laughs.

It was Halloween night when a young girl named Mariannwe Ross was left on the doorstep of The Salvation Army’s Waiʻoli Orphanage in Mānoa. Her parents, loving but overwhelmed, hoped the organization would invest in their daughter’s life.

It did, and then some.

Last fall, Trimmer watched it all unfold when four generations of Marianne’s family made the trip to Hawaiʻi to honor her memory and the organization that had changed everything.

Trimmer took the family down to the chapel built in 1929, the very chapel where Marianne had formed her earliest memories. Her grandchildren pulled up a video of her singing songs there.

“The times in life when things got tough and almost felt as if people didn’t care, she would remember the strength and lessons she gained from The Salvation Army,” Trimmer says. “Marianne came to us not knowing how to be loved or if she was loved. The fruit of The Salvation Army ministry is four generations who are productively living their lives loving each other.”

That same thread of intergenerational transformation runs through one of Trimmer’s favorite stories, one much closer to home.

Lt. Antonio Rio is the newest corps officer at The Salvation Army’s Kāneʻohe Corps, the very church where he grew up. But his story with the organization began more than 30 years ago, when his father, George, walked through the doors of The Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center, a 52-bed inpatient recovery program just off Nimitz Highway, and began the hard work of turning his life around. George is still clean and sober today.

Antonio was born into that transformed family. He had his struggles in his early teen years, but eventually turned toward the same calling that had anchored his father. He enrolled in The Salvation Army’s training college, committing his life to go wherever the organization sent him. Last year, Trimmer and Anie brought him home to Kāneʻohe.

Since arriving in July, Antonio has already launched a new chapter of The Salvation Army Meals Program, distributing backpacks of food to children at Title I schools on Fridays so they have something to eat over the weekend.

“And it’s all because George walked through those doors 30-plus years ago,” Trimmer says.

The Adult Rehabilitation Center is just one piece of The Salvation Army’s extensive network of recovery services in Hawaiʻi. The organization also operates adult treatment services in Nu‘uanu that offer social detox and cognitive recovery for men and women, as well as Family Treatment Services in Kaimukī, which holds a distinction that may be unique not just in the state, but in the country.

“FTS is the only program in the state that allows women in addiction to have their child with them,” Trimmer explains. “Both parent and child are ministered to in the midst of addiction.”

Housed on a campus that was once an orphanage, FTS also offers transitional housing for women who have completed recovery, supporting them as they pursue education, vocations and permanent housing.

It’s an example of something Trimmer returns to again and again: The Salvation Army’s willingness to pivot. It’s a principle that goes back to the organization’s founding in the pubs and bars of East London in the 1860s, where William Booth began holding services for people established churches had turned away.

“Those people were not treated with dignity,” Trimmer says. “So, The Salvation Army was born and began their own services.”

That nimbleness is on full display in the organization’s disaster response. The Salvation Army has been in the emergency relief business since the Galveston, Texas, hurricanes of 1904, and Hawaiʻi has felt that presence firsthand. Anie was sent back to Kauaʻi as a training college cadet to help after Hurricane ʻIniki. The organization was also deeply involved in the Lāhainā recovery effort after the 2023 wildfires, and is still there today.

When the Kona low storms battered Oʻahu earlier this year, The Salvation Army mobilized quickly, feeding folks at every emergency shelter that opened. To date, the division has assisted nearly 12,000 people, provided more than 9,500 meals and delivered more than $250,000 in direct financial assistance to families across Waialua, Lāʻie, Wahiawā, Kapolei, Kāneʻohe and beyond.

But the meals and the money, Trimmer says, aren’t the whole story.

“The thing I like the most is we also have people who just sit and listen,” he says. “One of the biggest impacts of any disaster is the manner of trauma and/or just concern that comes from the event, so one of the things The Salvation Army prides itself on is slowing down long enough to just sit and listen. Instead of just mass distribution, which is great, but we’re also proud to just come alongside people and let them talk story.’”

Beyond disaster response, the division operates a sprawling network of programs touching nearly every corner of island life, from Camp Homelani, which has offered summers of growth and adventure to underserved youth for 79 years, to the Pathway of Hope program, which pairs families with intentional case management to help break the cycle of generational poverty. The Kroc Center in Kapolei — that “ginormous center,” as Trimmer calls it — draws people of all ages for everything from the award-winning Kroc Dance Academy to worship services.

And then there’s Echelon, a group of young professionals who roll up their sleeves for community service, including the Red Pencil Project, a year-long character development program for third graders at Title I schools. In fact, MidWeek columnist Darah Dung is among the Echelon Hawaiʻi board members helping carry that work forward.

As National Salvation Army Week (first declared by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954) is observed May 11-17 across Hawaiʻi and the Pacific, Trimmer isn’t shy about what he’s asking from the community.

“I firmly believe God has got The Salvation Army,” he says. “I have never worried about resources. Having said that, God often stirs people’s hearts to be part of the solution in the community.”

Whether that means volunteering at The Salvation Army’s Thanksgiving meal distribution at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center, ringing a bell at a Red Kettle, joining Echelon, or reaching out to a neighbor in need, the door is open.

“The people are the army behind the shield,” he says. “If anyone feels led or has the desire to come alongside The Salvation Army, we’d love them to contact us. There are many tangible ways to get engaged, and we’ve been ʻohana for 130 years in Hawaiʻi. We’re not going anywhere.”

To learn more, visit hawaii.salvationarmy.org.