Samu Sefo, the first person from Hawai'i to loan his time and talents to the Katrina Relief effort of Common Ground, has a bit of the air of a reluctant hero about him.

That, or he's just really tired after spending nine-plus hours gutting houses in the hurricane-ravaged Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

"In Hawai'i, we have everything," said the 26-year-old Sefo, weariness pervading his voice, in a call from a friend's cell phone. "Here, hardly anybody is returning."

When Hawai'i Kai Church members stopped by Common Ground during a mission to New Orleans a few weeks ago, they bumped into Sefo. He was running a food distribution program at that time, already six months into his work, and when he wasn't working, he was sleeping in a tent.

Today, he's still there.

How did the former Polynesian Cultural Center dancer come to be part of the Katrina relief effort? And why is Sefo still there? Sefo's answers show a man who knows and lives the aloha spirit, and strives to carry it to the most devastated urban area in America.

Sefo lived in La'ie for 14 years before moving to Florida, where he married and had a daughter. He'd been dancing in hula and Polynesian shows at the Polynesian Cultural Center and later at SeaWorld Orlando since he was 14, but he remembers the moment he felt the call to go to New Orleans.

His home life had fallen apart. He and his wife divorced. She had custody of their daughter, Keloe, now 3, and was living in Indiana. He'd gone to Indiana to visit them.

There he was, between jobs, freezing in the Indiana winter, watching follow-up stories of the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina.

"I was watching TV, and there was nothing but houses broken apart in the Lower Ninth," he said. "They were showing people in the dome — no food, no water."

Sefo saw a report about volunteers from the activist-oriented Common Ground, and remembers the message: "Come on down!" Volunteers were needed to help put New Orleans back together in an effort that spanned housing, food, legal and medical needs. Sefo called Common Ground and was told to hop on a plane and a shuttle would drop him off at the headquarters.

So he did, to the surprise of some.

"When I was paying for my ticket, one way, (the airline representatives) were saying, 'Who'd want to go to New Orleans right now?' " Sefo recalled.

During the drive to headquarters, the shuttle passed watermarks on the freeway, a strange sight. Then a more eerie thing happened: As they neared the Ninth Ward, a strange silence took hold; it was like a vacuum of human noises, without even the caw of a crow.

Sefo's voice goes quiet. There are no words to describe the state of the place.

Even Common Ground spokesman Sakura Koné had to borrow words to convey the devastation. He quoted a recent Iraqi war veteran who came to New Orleans, who said: "This place looks like a U.S. bombing raid."

In the midst of that, Sefo was put to work right away. His days start early — wake-up is 6 a.m. — and after breakfast and a quick meeting, the crew goes to work gutting houses. It's a backbreaking gig, taking a crew into a flood-damaged home.

"We clear out furniture, spray bleach around, clean out the whole house," Sefo said. "It's very dirty work. We work with a lot of mold."

Then the crew hauls debris out into the street for pickup, finishes about 5 p.m., heads back for a shower and dinner, then goes to bed.

They do this day in and out, with only an occasional day off.

"That's life," said Sefo, who leads the crew.

And it's hard, too. His voice grows quiet when he talks about sifting through the stuff of people's lives, knowing that things that were once treasured keepsakes are now nothing but trash.

The need for gutting is dire: Evacuated residents want desperately to move back into their homes, but aren't allowed to do so until the property is cleared. Some people have the $5,000 to pay a commercial outfit to gut a house; others wait in line for free services such as those provided by Common Ground.

Not that everyone is still hurting: Koné said angrily that the most affluent part of New Orleans "has resources well and above where they were before."

AS FOR THE OTHER TWO-THIRDS ...

"In certain parts of New Orleans, electricity and water and garbage (removal) hasn't been returned," he said. "We're getting a new generation of homeless people who have nowhere else to go and are ill-prepared to come back home. They're coming back to no housing."

It's doubly tragic in that New Orleans residents tend to be less migratory than people in other parts of the country, Koné said.

"Of all the cities in America, it's the least nomadic," Koné said "You have four or five generations of people living within a square block of each other. Some can trace their heritage all the way back to slavery. It's a very slow migration. Even if they left for awhile (to join) the military, or for college, they came back. There's a special spirit that exists here."

Sefo recognizes that spirit, too. Residents who have so little drop by with lunch, or bring by jambalaya. He appreciates that — especially since the average Common Ground activist doesn't share his Island love of grinds.

"Trust me, food here (at Common Ground) is not good at all," Sefo said. "Most people are vegetarians and vegan. I gotta find my meat."

To give back some aloha spirit, Sefo put on a lu'au show last February. With "plenny meat."

"I cooked three pigs and chicken long rice, shoyu chicken," he said.

Entertainment was a fire dance and slap dance, which he taught and performed, and he even had help from female staffers, who tied balls to a cord to swing around their bodies.

"The hippie girls did the poi balls," Sefo said. "It was a pretty good show. We had a big old bonfire and drums."

Koné had to miss it — he was on a speaking engagement — but he heard the lu'au was "da bomb," he said with a laugh.

Vegetarian or not, his fellow Common Ground workers earn high marks from Sefo.

"I met a lot of good people, really kind-hearted," Sefo said, adding that he's seen a large percentage of students spending their school holidays volunteering.

But Sefo knows he's where he needs to be right now, even if it means sacrifices.

"Keloe, when she calls, says 'Are you done yet?' Her mom's telling (her and her) friends at school, 'Dad's gonna help kids down in New Orleans,' " Sefo said. "I do know that my daughter misses me, and I miss her, too. Not every family here has what she's got. She's got a home, she's being taken care of.

"... This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, to help somebody out that really needs help."