Changing a users password in /etc/passwd instead of NIS

[Dave Martini]

I would like a user to change his password on his local RHEL 3 account 
but when typing

passwd

it is going to NIS since this machine is a NIS client.

In Solaris there is a command

passwd -r files

which means to update the local files but I don't see that option in 
redhat.

How do I change the local account password for a user.

Thank You.
Dave Martini
LLNL