A psychiatrist set out to find a 33-year-old Hilo woman who battles homelessness and addiction after a failed medical intervention.

Chad Koyanagi, a psychiatrist who’s spent decades treating Honolulu’s homeless population, arrived Monday at an oceanside encampment in the city’s Sand Island area to search for a woman with mental health struggles who seemed to think she was on the Big Island.

A man who sleeps in an abandoned red Mustang pointed to a patch of sidewalk covered by a gray tarp. The tent was empty. But it didn’t take long for Koyanagi to find its nightly occupant talking to herself while walking alone on a nearby beach.

Within days, the psychiatrist’s crisis intervention would lead the woman to agree to move off the streets and into an emergency care facility in Iwilei that co

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