Jenna Oda was traveling on the Mainland last year when she got the call from her mother. Five siblings, children she had never met and was not related to, needed help and the two youngest were coming to live with them.

Though the news was out of the blue — they had never taken in kids before — Oda, 24, was excited to come home.

"I just felt like they needed someone to love them," she said.

That's how the two youngest victims of Rita Makekau, the woman convicted of horribly abusing and torturing the five siblings, came to live with Oda and her mom and stepfather. The girl is now 14 and a freshman in high school. The youngest, a boy, is in sixth grade.

"They'll never forget what happened to them," Oda says, yet she is confident they'll be OK. "We tell them, if you want something better, you can get it. Maybe you have to work harder than everyone else, but that's OK."

Oda is hardly the soft aunty type. She's a boxer who went through the Olympic Trials, a mixed martial artist and a roofer by trade. The kids call her "Jenna," not Aunty.

Rita Makekau, sister of the children's mother, pleaded no contest to 8 counts of abusing the five kids. The details disclosed in court of what was done to those kids make you want to cry. They were denied food for days at a time. They were hit on the head with a baseball bat and cut with knives. One child was made to sleep under the house with the dogs. Makekau broke their teeth with a hammer. One child described being made to run across the yard while a pellet gun was fired at them.

The charges of abuse in the case occurred between 2004 and 2006, when the children were 7 to 14 years old, but Oda believes it started well before that. Makekau's daughter and son-in-law, Barbara and Gabriel Kalama, became the children's guardians in 2000. They also pleaded no contest to second-degree assault, abuse and child endangerment and will each serve a year in jail.

Makekau appeared unrepentant in court, quoting the Bible about "do not spare the rod." She is now claiming to be immune to the state court system because she is a member of a fringe Hawaiian Sovereignty group, a claim that has angered Native Hawaiian leaders and that Oda, also part-Hawaiian, called "B.S."

Last week, Makekau began serving her five-year sentence. The court case is behind the children now; their new lives are ahead of them.

On Thursday afternoon, Oda was anxiously waiting for the youngest boy to come home from a three-day school camp.

"It's the first time for him, and he's afraid of the dark, you know, after all the things that happened to him in the dark," she said.

He keeps a nightlight on all night and has to turn on every light in the hall to get to the bathroom. "It's OK, though," Oda says. "He laughs about it. He turns on all the lights and runs down the hall, but he laughs."

When the two kids first got to the Odas' house, it was a tough adjustment.

"They did everything to get kicked out — stealing, lying, fighting," Oda said. "We just stuck by them. That's when they settled down, when they knew we weren't going to give up on them, that no matter what, we were here for them."

Now, they go to Kumon. They play with the Wii they got for Christmas. They see their three older siblings often. They joke about how "fat" they are compared to their previous skin-and-bones. Their oldest brother started college. The second-oldest will graduate from high school this year.

"They take it day by day," Oda said. "They have off and on days. Sometimes, they just shut off for a little while. But for the most part, they're happy kids."

The girl likes to put on skits, re-enacting things that happened in school, doing different voices and cracking everyone up. The boy is a big joker — in fact, all the kids like to make their caregivers laugh. Sometimes the laughter and fun and utter relief goes well into the evening hours, when everyone is sitting together having a joyful time.

"If anybody met them, you could never understand how anyone could abuse these kids," Oda said. "They're so funny, they're such characters. They're so much fun to be around."

Oda, the straight-talking big-hearted un-Aunty describes the kids in her care with such admiration and love. "It takes a big person to do what they've done, but they're so little," she says. "They're unreal. They're heroes."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.

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