The drumbeat of bad economic news, from millions of lost jobs to shuttered businesses nationwide, can be so deafening that it's possible to forget that each layoff is felt by a single person.

Someone who had wagered on a career to last until retirement. Someone filing unemployment claims for the first time after working for decades.

The words do not come easily when the well-wishers ask how that feels. The questions can sting. The answers, too.

And yet, hope remains.

Hawai'i's jobless rate may be at a 10-year high, but there are people out there refusing to give up.

THINKING POSITIVELY

In the year since she lost her job as a flight attendant at Aloha Airlines, Daniela Freitas-Ronquilio has struggled to maintain her usual sunny demeanor.

"I try to think positive about everything," she said. "It is easier said than done, but I try."

The Kunia mother of two had been a flight attendant for only five months when Aloha shut down last March. It was long enough to know she had lost something precious, which made all the well-meaning comments difficult at times.

"At first, when Aloha shut down and I lost my job, people would come up and talk to me about it," said the 35-year-old Freitas-Ronquilio. "I got the feeling they were feeling sorry for me."

Every other comment seemed to focus on the fact that she had worked so hard to get the job — to retool herself after a long career as a professional bodyboarder — and now her career was over before it started. But Freitas-Ronquilio refused to give in.

"I never felt sorry for myself," she said. "I never let myself get into a depressing mode. I'm a pretty positive person. I felt like everything in life is how you take it. I always try to make the best of what I got."

She was unsuccessful at efforts to find work with other airlines, and then with the City & County of Honolulu, but she did land a part-time job as a waitress at a steakhouse. She wants more, though, and leans on her faith as a Christian to keep her going until something happens.

But there are days when her emotional strength succumbs to the fact that she doesn't have a full-time job.

"Sometimes when I think about that, I get frustrated and sad," she said. "Then I try to hang onto what I believe in. Sometimes it is hard. It is not easy. You can say it, you can believe in it, but you still have to live your life."

PRESERVING SELF-ESTEEM

Dane Senser had a job lined up when he left California last October. It paid $15 an hour and included housing at the Kaua'i estate he would oversee. He sold possessions to help his move, figuring that at 56 he had found a dream job in Hawai'i.

"When I got to Honolulu, my employer said 'Here's $200, I can't use you. Good luck,' " Senser said.

In the months that followed, every conversation became an embarrassing encounter for Senser, who lived on the streets before he found a room with an outreach program on Pi'ikoi Street.

"There were times when I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but I cried," Senser said. "It was so embarrassing and so degrading. You get in that state of mind, and you don't feel you can get out of it. It takes every bit of your soul and heart to lift yourself out of it."

Senser had been the director of concierge services at an upscale senior living center in San Luis Obispo. Now he was filing for unemployment for the first time in his life, digging through garbage for cans and bottles, and keeping a dress shirt and pants clean for job interviews.

The clothes have helped him maintain some measure of dignity.

"If I have an interview for a job, I can have some self-esteem and see myself getting that job," Senser said. "If I tell them I am homeless, I don't think they are even going to give me the job. A lot of people can't understand. They have never been there."

He's had 15 job interviews, but none of them paid well enough to allow him to get his own place. And last week, Senser received his last unemployment check.

"It's a tough situation," he said. "You get deep in a hole. The deeper it gets, the harder it is to come out of that hole."

ALIENATION

John Camery was laid off two years ago as a system analyst for General Dynamics, and while he has worked the occasional temporary job, he has often felt alienated by the working world.

The 58-year-old Mililani resident blames that feeling on the many different jobs that the unemployed once held.

"To me, the worst thing about it is there seems to be a lack of community," he said. "People don't understand each other. Everybody is so specialized in their work these days that they don't see the other person's situation."

He has met other unemployed people working at the same temporary jobs he took on, but even among kindred spirits, the conversations can be awkward, Camery said. At a job where he replaced computers over the course of several weekends, Camery found himself alongside older, unemployed workers, like himself, and recent college graduates.

"You don't know what to explain," he said. "It's very different from person to person. Depending on their background, they either relate to your background or they don't."

JUST PART OF THE PLAN

Matthew Osorio lost his job two weeks ago, but he and his wife have decided that won't stop them from being good grandparents.

Life will be different for a time, even precarious, since he was laid off as a residential counselor with the Big Island Substance Abuse Council in Hilo. But the 53-year-old Osorio plans to deal with the sudden change with his chin up. Anything less would risk his family's emotional stability.

"Our family — my son-in-laws, our kids and grandkids — if I were to be consumed by this, I think they would be too," he said. "So we are not heading in that direction."

He has tried to keep his situation private — which is difficult in a small town like Hilo — but concluded that all of it, even the pain he felt the first day, was part of a plan. That helps him when he has to talk about what happened.

"It's difficult to sometimes explain this, but I am hopeful," he said. "My wife and I are both positive that this is exactly what was supposed to happen. It's going to be OK."

Osorio doesn't plan to tell his three grandchildren, however. He doesn't want them to feel uncomfortable or afraid.

"We have always been Grandma and Grandpa, and that's who we have to remain to be," he said. "It has come to define my wife and me, and it is a wonderful thing. So we will do whatever it is we have to do in order to maintain this home and that security for them."