Cameras in the Palm Trees (True Story)
Back when I was living in Hawaii, my friends and I had this routine. We’d end up at the same beach in Waikiki—Fort DeRussy, I think it was. It wasn’t special or hidden, just the closest to my apartment. We’d take a couple of folding chairs, a cooler, and sometimes a bong. Nothing fancy.
That day felt like all the others — slow air, salt sticking to our skin, and the kind of lazy peace that makes you forget time exists. We were half-baked and laughing about nothing when a lifeguard rolled up.
He didn’t come in hot or anything, just kind of strolled over and told us we couldn’t be doing that there — that the beach was technically federal property. Then he said something that stuck with me: “There are cameras in the palm trees.”
I remember looking up, squinting at the fronds moving in the wind. He said they fed into some police station up the beach. Cameras. In the trees. He wasn’t joking, either.
We laughed it off, but I never quite forgot it.
Hours later, we’d all fallen asleep in the sand. The sun had dropped behind the hotels, and the air felt heavy and strange. When I woke up, my mouth was dry, my head pounding, and my stomach twisted with that immediate sense that something was wrong.
My roommate’s chihuahua — a little tan thing named Pico — was gone. She’d been in the hospital, and I’d promised to keep him safe. I remember how he’d curled up against me before I passed out, tiny heartbeat against my ribs. Now there was just a patch of sand where he’d been.
No pawprints. No leash. No barking. Nothing.
I tore up and down that beach like a madman. I must’ve asked thirty people if they’d seen a small dog. Nobody had. Not even the regulars who saw everything.
It started feeling unreal — like I’d made him up, or he’d evaporated.
Then I remembered the lifeguard. The cameras.
I didn’t even think — I just pulled out my phone and called 911.
I told the dispatcher, “Look, I know this isn’t an emergency, but I lost my friend’s dog on the beach. And earlier, a lifeguard told me there were cameras in the palm trees. Is there any chance someone could check the footage?”
There was this pause. Then the dispatcher says,
“You’re right, it’s not an emergency… but this is crazy.”
She tells me she’d just gotten off another call — literally minutes before mine.
A chef at the Hilton Hawaiian Village reported someone finding a little dog.
Same description.
My brain froze. Two calls. Same dog. Ten-minute walk apart.
I ran the whole way barefoot. The beach, the street, across the resort lawn. When I got to the Hilton, most of the place was dark except for one restaurant still lit up — glowing warm yellow against the night.
I walk in and there’s Pico.
Sitting upright in a dining chair like he’d reserved the table himself.
Two dancers in hula skirts are laughing, cutting pieces of steak and feeding him by hand.
I just stood there. Salt-stained, half-buzzed, watching this little dog living better than I ever had.
And for a second, I thought about the cameras again.
How maybe the lifeguard wasn’t crazy.
Maybe they were watching everything the whole time.
Or maybe Pico just knew exactly where to go.
