LOS ANGELES — Jayden Maiava is sitting in the most opulent, modern and expensive real estate in college athletics. He’s on a third-floor terrace at USC’s gleaming Bloom Football Performance Center, the centerpiece of a $225 million athletic development on campus. The downtown skyline sprawls in front of him, with the famed Griffith Observatory to the left and the city’s iconic Hollywood sign to the far left.
Behind Maiava, the interior of the building offers every football amenity imaginable. The weight room, meeting rooms, indoor walk-through area, lounges and fueling stations are all best in class and brand new. The recovery areas include float beds, infrared therapy beds, sleep pods, hot and cold plunge pools, zero-gravity chairs and AI-powered massage chairs from Japan.
“We’re spoiled here,” the Trojans quarterback says with a smile. Nobody in the building is more keenly aware of his privileged existence than Maiava, having come to the literal lap of luxury from nearly nothing.
Maiava grew up in Hawaiʻi sleeping on floors. Or outdoors. He lived in Pālolo Valley Homes public housing on the island of Oʻahu, just one piece in a human jigsaw puzzle of extended family that somehow fit into a three-bedroom house.
How many people lived in the Maiava home at any given time?
“About 15?” William Maiava, Jayden’s father, guesses.
“Sometimes 20,” Jerushua, Jayden’s mother, suggests.
Jerushua’s parents, original owners of the house, slept in the carport. She and William were in one bedroom, along with some of their eight children (oldest to youngest: Heaven, Jahssiah, Jayden, Jacob, Justice, Henna, Hinena, Jaestin). Two of Jerushua’s siblings, and some of their kids, occupied the other bedrooms. The older children? They scattered out wherever they could find room, or relocated to the yard.
Meal time was an exercise in teamwork and sacrifice—whoever was available pitched in to cook, but sometimes not every plate was filled. Bathroom use was an exercise in patience—the kids lined up, with girls getting priority while boys were occasionally sent outside. That’s sometimes where they showered as well, utilizing the garden hose.
“Fun times,” Jerushua says with a laugh.
“We’re good at Tetris,” jokes William. “We made it work, man.”
It took work to make it work. Hard work, in a poverty-stricken part of an expensive island. The picturesque Pālolo Valley is just inland from bustling Honolulu and Waikīkī—within sight of world-famous Diamond Head Beach but removed enough to have some pastoral vibe. Big-city problems mingle with random chickens roaming the roadsides.
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