It was the way the boy said "thank you" that caught Solomon Kauinui's attention.

A simple thing, really. A behavior change unnoticed by most. But a mentor's validation often comes in small doses.

As a "Big" — the abbreviated title he received in 2003 when he volunteered to help Cody Abe through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Honolulu — Kauinui learned that when you set out to change a life, it may be a while before you see results.

That makes it all the nicer when it finally happens.

Kauinui noticed the change a year after he met Cody, a boy from Kapahulu who has never met his father.

"You want to teach ethics and being honest and to be courteous," Kauinui said. "Seeing him kind of pick that up and doing it by himself has been very rewarding."

They've been a perfect match, Kauinui and Cody, who is now 13. Together they embody a key principle at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Honolulu: One-on-one mentorship can create lasting positive change in children.

The nonprofit organization, which started in Honolulu in 1963, matches boys and girls from single-parent households with volunteers. The impact is powerful.

According to a national study, children who spend time with a Big Brother or Big Sister are 52 percent less likely to skip school, 46 percent less likely to start using drugs and 33 percent less likely to hit someone.

And along the way, personal self-esteem gets a boost.

MORE LIKE FRIENDS

Kauinui and Cody are typical matches.

They meet once a week, usually for several hours on Sunday. They go to the beach, hike, toss around a football. They've seen movies together and helped at community service projects.

"The relationship has turned more into a friendship, not just little brother, big brother," said Kauinui, a 30-year-old Hawaiian Telcom engineer from Kaimuki. "It's like a duplicate of myself, only smaller. A lot of people think he is my son."

Kauinui has no children of his own — he's getting married this summer — and said he joined the program because he wanted to give back to the community.

Cody was drawn to his mentor almost immediately, said the boy's mother, Lee-Ann Abe, a 38-year-old special-education teacher at Kaimuki Middle School. It was a relief, as well, since a previous relationship with a mentor did not work out, lasting only three months, she said.

"Ever since then it has been wonderful," she said. "It was a person for my son to hang out with. A person he could talk to. For me, being a single parent, it was important for my son to have a positive person in his life."

Kauinui helped set her boy on the path to manhood.

"My son went through a lot of behavioral things," she said. "Sometimes you don't want to talk to your mother, so I think for my son, having another male to go to was good."

Sometimes she'll ask Kauinui to talk to Cody about the way he is treating his family or teachers at Kaimuki Middle School, where he is an eighth-grader and a member of the school band.

The mentor has a way of making the boy listen, but he also teaches by example. Cody sees in Kauinui an educated man who went to college and who gives back to his community, Lee-Ann Abe said.

Now her son talks about going to college.

"I think for my son, if he didn't have Solomon in his life, he would be a different child," she said. "I don't think he'd be as focused as he is now."

Of course, Cody doesn't see all this as deeply as everyone around him. He's just a kid who likes to skateboard and play the clarinet. But Kauinui is important to him.

"He's like an actual brother," the boy said. "He takes care of me and all that kind of stuff. I like hanging out with Solomon."

SHORT ON VOLUNTEERS

Despite the success stories, the nonprofit organization is frequently short of adult mentors. On a typical weekend, there are about 150 mentors — men and women — meeting with matches of the same gender. There are 87 children on the waiting list.

Most people think the task is harder and more time-consuming than it really is, said Dennis Brown, president and chief executive officer of the organization.

"They think they are not good enough to be a role model," he said. "It's really not about that. It's about being a friend. Anyone who is willing to get involved with a kid can do it. It isn't that difficult."

The youths, from 6 to 16, come from single parents, foster homes and from grandparents who are raising them because their real parents are in prison, in rehab or gone. About 80 percent of them are from families living at or below the poverty level, Brown said.

Brown has a unique perspective on his organization. The 54-year-old administrator was its first little brother.

His parents were divorced and his mother, who worked three jobs, was raising the family in a public-housing complex off Kalakaua Avenue. Like it has for youths of all generations, the wrong crowd beckoned with an offer of paint-sniffing highs.

"I had a lot of anger and feeling like the world was against me, that nobody cares, nobody stays around," he said. "I didn't want a Big Brother. A lot of kids don't. I didn't want anyone to take the place of my father."

But his Big Brother stuck with him. He taught him to play tennis, took him to the library and gave him a tour of the University of Hawai'i campus.

Forty-five years later they are still friends.

'BIG COUPLE'

Bonds like that seem to surprise mentors, at least at first.

Mario and Lori Zaragosa are a "Big Couple" to 8-year-old Kaulana Castillo. When they met him in 2006, they thought their involvement would be limited to weekends.

"As time went on, the relationship grew," said Mario Zaragosa. "You get to know one another. This is not some random kid I am going out with for the day. You get to know the family and because of that, he wants you to be part of his life. It was something we both weren't expecting."

Now Kaulana, a Waipahu boy being raised by his single mother and grandparents, will call the Zaragosas to share details of his life, from triumph to boredom — how his day went at school, what he's doing, how football practice went.

"At first you sit back and say, 'Why is he telling me those things?' " Mario Zaragosa said. "But then you realize it is the impact we make. For him to want to call and share these things, those are the rewarding things. Then you see how much he really looks up to you."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.