She moved to Waco, Texas, from Los Angeles, California, in approximately 1988 with Robyn Bunds, a former Branch Davidian turned critic.
[1] She is originally from Hawaii and is a registered psychiatric nurse at Kaneohe State Hospital, and remarried to Roy Kiyabu, a chef, as of 2003.
[1][2][4] Dana Okimoto was first introduced to David Koresh – going by his birth name, Vernon Wayne Howell – after hearing him preach in a Kaimuki church in 1986.
[7] Okimoto with her two sons left the Branch Davidians in 1992 before the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) attempted a raid on the compound.
[11][12] She also told the Associated Press that she believed Koresh did not release twelve of the seventeen children who died in the April 19, 1993, fire that ended the siege because he knew that the mothers would not receive custody through the state since he fathered them.