Sponsor James Best

I am a (retiring) family physician and urgent care physician currently living in Honolulu, but originally from The San Francisco Bay Area. I have a long history of charitable work, starting with my involvement in The Amigos de las Americas vaccination program during my high school and college years, and continuing with my work as a family physician serving the low-income mostly native Hawaiian population on Oahu. I also have a love of hiking, backpacking and international adventure travel, and in the past few years completed a trek of the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal and an attempted through-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. 

I found out about the Lalmba Association from a long-term friend of mine who is an Emergency Medicine physician, and who helped to set up the Matoso Clinic in Kenya in 1988. He has since participated in numerous Tembea Na Mimi fund-raising walks, and shared his stories and photos of the walks and Matoso clinic with me, which piqued my interest. Participating in the 2025 Tembea Na Mimi fund-raising walk for me is a perfect marriage of my love for charitable work and my love of adventure travel, and I hope it is the start of a long relationship between me and the Lalmba Association.