Marlo Moku has not been seen since September

Please help my extended 'Ohana.

Family members of a Hilo woman missing since Sept. 23 are hopeful she's still alive and that someone has information that will lead them to her.

Sarah Moku said the family will set up a tent Saturday at Four-Mile Beach in Keaukaha. The purpose is to talk story with beachgoers and hand out fliers with a picture of Marlo Moku, who left her Kaumana home to buy cigarettes and failed to return.

"We'll try to go there early," said Sarah Moku, a Maui resident who is Marlo Moku's younger sister. "The kids can swim and we want to put up a big vinyl sign with her picture that says, 'Please help us find our mommy.'"

Marlo Moku, 34, is the mother of three children: Jacob, 11; Kanoe, 9, and Lily, 3. Her boyfriend, Sean Oblero, has been taking care of the children since her disappearance. In addition, Moku has three other siblings, sisters Iwa and Kawehi, and half-brother Joshua. Her parents are Wayne Moku and Darolyn Kua, both of Hilo.

She was last seen at about 7 p.m. Sept. 23 at the Kaumana Drive 7-Eleven store.

The missing woman was not employed and, according to her sister, was on medication for bipolar disorder.

"She needs help because she hasn't had her shot and it's been seven months," Sarah Moku said. She added that her sister was originally treated with pills, which she would sometimes forget to take.

"If she wasn't consistent in taking her pills, she would fall back into her sickness and we would have to take her to the hospital, because it got so bad that they would have to stabilize her," Sarah Moku said. "But recently, in the last two years, they started her on a shot. She had to go to the doctor's every two weeks, I believe, and not have to remember to take the pills. The shot would keep her very consistent."

Marlo Moku's blue 1995 Chevrolet Corsica four-door sedan was found by a fisherman at the bottom of a 120-foot cliff near the old Hakalau Sugar Mill the morning of Oct. 10. The license plates, reported by police as HTN 328, were missing from the car. Police identified the car as Moku's through its vehicle identification number.

The car was lifted to the top of the cliff the following day by helicopter and was towed back to Hilo police headquarters for further investigation.

"We had a reconstructionist go through the path the vehicle traveled," police Lt. Mitch Kanehailua of the Criminal Investigation Section said Thursday. "We have to go through the report now; it's rather lengthy. Other than that, there's no new information."

Asked if he suspected foul play, Kanehailua said: "Not at this time. We really don't know; we're looking at all the possibilities.

"We've had reports of sightings, but we've checked them out and really, nothing."

Kanehailua said that Maui police have tentatively identified a body there that Moku's family had requested Hilo police check, but the body was not Moku's.

Sarah Moku said she doesn't think her sister was suicidal, even when not medicated.

"She'd just blab on about things that went on in the past, things that are bottled up inside and just all come out at once. Her frustrations and that," she said.

She said that her sister had never disappeared for any length of time before.

"She goes to town a lot with the kids, knick-knack shopping here and there, but it was not like she'd never come home," Sarah Moku said. "She'd go to the store to get some cigarettes, get this, get that, but she'd always come back. She liked to go to the beach. She'd go to Honolii because her boyfriend surfs there."

She said that the family is dissatisfied with the police investigation.

"They told us from the beginning it's not a crime to be missing if you're an adult, and we felt that they kind of classified her as a runaway, because they didn't make any effort to find her the first couple of weeks," Sarah Moku said. "Then, when her car was found about two weeks after, that's when they stepped it up a little."