Laura Kamalani Paikai calls it her obsession.

It started two years ago when Paikai was looking for her father's brother's grave.

"I Googled his name and the cemetery in California came up on Find A Grave," she said. "I was fascinated by all these people who listed the graves. And the site was free. I found my uncle, and I was hooked."

The Web site www.FindAGrave.com allows people from around the country to post information about cemeteries, create online memorials and contact each other for help in finding loved ones' resting places. Paikai has posted her 'ohana's information and has helped strangers from around the country find relatives buried in Hawai'i.  

She spends hours in the state library looking up obituaries and then more time going to cemeteries to visit the graves, take down information from the headstones, and sometimes take a picture to e-mail to the person. On her Find A Grave profile page, Kinohi2005, she wrote:

"My entries are made with the utmost respect and it is always my goal to transcribe the information with accuracy and care. When I add a burial record, it is not unusual for me to observe a moment of silence in honor of the deceased and to offer a prayer to God for those who remain."

It's not like she needs something to pass time. Paikai has a full-time job, five children, two grandchildren and a third on the way. She's busy.

"I struggle to strike a balance between living in the real world and this obsession," she said. "I live between the 'here' and the 'hereafter.' "

One woman from the Mainland recently wrote to ask for help finding the grave of a long-lost love. It had been a summer romance, and he entered the service and died in combat.

"She needed to find closure," Paikai said.

She found the obituary and visited the grave. She took a picture of the headstone and sent it to the woman, who wrote back an emotional e-mail of thanks. "For her to share this bittersweet memory with me, a stranger, I was very honored," Paikai said.

For all her efforts, she doesn't ask for anything in return.

"Nothing. Manuahi," she said. "People have offered to pay, and I just don't see it that way. It's something I have a passion to do. I don't consider it work."

And though she believes that every life deserves to be remembered, she says she does this more for the living than the dead.

"We're always looking for something or someone, and sometimes that person is no longer there. If people can find that closure or release or healing through a Web site, so be it."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.