Tonnessen to retire next year after 13 years leading Friends of the Children’s Justice Center of Maui

Nick Mendez now calls Paul Tonnessen “father” and Tonnessen says the 26-year-old is his “hānai son.” But a decade ago, the case was much different, when Mendez was a troubled teenager living at the Maui Salvation Army’s Kanehoalani home for boys and Tonnessen was his latest juvenile advocate.

“I was in and out of the court system as a juvenile,” Mendez said on Tuesday. “Paul saved me from that cycle.”

Mendez, who is in the next officer recruit class of the Maui Police Department, is just one of the many success stories involving Tonnessen, and one of the 32 children Tonnessen and his husband, Richard Carr, have fostered over the years.

But after 13 years leading the Friends of the Children’s Justice Center of Maui as its executive director, Tonnessen has decided to retire on May 8, 2026, his 67th birthday.

“It’s a hard job. It’s a rewarding job,” Tonnessen said.

Since August 2012, Tonnessen has led the nonprofit that supports the ongoing fundraising and awareness needs of the Children’s Justice Center, which serves more than 3,700 families and child victims each year, according to the Friends’ website.

Tonnessen’s primary function is fundraising for the nonprofit, which provides 40 social service agencies on Maui with money to help troubled or at-risk children.

“We’re trying to heal children who someone broke,” Tonnessen said. “And people want to give. They want to be part of that healing process, even if it’s just financial.”

This week, he has been putting the final touches on Healing Hearts, the largest annual fundraiser of the Friends of the Children’s Justice Center of Maui that will be held tonight at the King Kamehameha Golf Club.

Tonnessen has been getting up at 4 a.m. and working until after dinner time on the sold-out event that is expected to raise more than $160,000. 

He said it’s these type of weeks that have led to his decision to retire: “I don’t want to die in my job. I want to have some type of quality of life.”

Debbie Cabebe, CEO of Maui Economic Opportunity, a nonprofit community action agency that provides a wide range of anti-poverty and human service programs throughout Maui County, said Tonnessen will be sorely missed.

“The Friends help nonprofits, even like MEO Head Start,” she said. “A lot of our Head Start families have needs that we don’t have funding to cover. We go to the Friends and he’s able to provide that assistance. He’s always there when needed.”

She added: “He’s a one-man show.”

Last year, Tonnessen helped raise more than $750,000 — his personal record for one year — and during his tenure he estimates that he has raised more than $5 million.

“That’s unrestricted funding that we can put towards braces, dental work, anything outside the box for a child in need that’s been traumatized,” Tonnessen said.

A successor has been chosen, but Tonnessen said the person will not be named publicly until closer to his final day. Until that day comes, Tonnessen will continue to pour his heart into his work. According to many people who know him closely, that work goes far beyond fundraising.

Tonnessen and his husband have brought 32 children into their home to nurture and love over the years. Tonnessen said all of them are their “hānai” children, a Hawaiian cultural practice of informal adoption.

They include Mendez, who calls Tonnessen “father” and Carr “mother,” largely because Carr does much of the cooking in the home where Mendez has lived off and on for about six years over the past decade.

Tonnessen worked in the diamond and jewelry business in Boston before moving in 1997 to Maui. On the island, he worked for a couple of jewelry stores and always looked for worthy places to volunteer.

He served on the Friends board as a volunteer for 13 years before taking his current position.

“I got connected early on with Friends because I was trying to find a nonprofit,” Tonnessen said of his early time living on Maui. “I was volunteering with Stacey Moniz, Women Helping Women, Maui AIDS Foundation. I come from an extremely abusive background as a child. So, I wanted to get involved, and the Friends naturally was that outlet for me in the nonprofit world.”

On Tuesday, at the Wailuku Coffee Company and with his eyes welling with tears, Tonnessen said he is proud of “being able to see the change in people’s lives. … Nick, he’s a perfect example. He’s a kid that if someone didn’t assist him, he would not be where he is today.”

Before Tonnessen and Carr took him in, Mendez was homeless, living behind Walmart. One of his first memories is of his dad committing suicide. 

“I mean, he just had not had a good life,” Tonnessen said. “Richard and I provided him structure and direction … He always says, ‘I owe it all to you,’ and he doesn’t. He did the work.”

Mendez said after his father took his own life, he was in and out of his mother’s house in his youth. 

“I was never really home. I ran away a ton of times,” Mendez said. “That was my first interactions with law enforcement. As I got older, I just was disconnected from school. I had a lot of depression. My mom put me on ADHD medications, which really made me very depressed. So I was just very much self-sabotaging.”

Mendez said Tonnessen provided him with consistency of being there, showing up and telling him what he needed to hear in the most straightforward way.

“He just cut out all the BS, I would flat out say,” Mendez said. “That’s what stood out at first for me.”

Tonnessen and Carr also took in Pi’ilani, who at just 11 months old was nearly killed by his mother’s then-boyfriend Christian Rosete four years ago. 

Rosete was sentenced to 45 years in prison in February after Pi’ilani was found with bruises on his face, bite marks on his arm, burn marks, a fractured wrist, bleeding in both eyes, a retinal detachment, bleeding in his brain, and was extremely malnourished, according to court documents.

Tonnessen and Carr took Pi’ilani into their household while his birth father worked an overnight job and was later able to take back his child and move to the Mainland.

“The baby that was almost murdered four years ago — having him in my life is a huge part of what stands out for me and Richard, being able to care for him for a while,” Tonnessen said. “The father got custody. They’re doing great. I just got off the phone with the dad. We’re going to see him at the end of this month.”

Mayor Richard Bissen, a longtime former judge, said in a statement to the Hawai’i Journalism Initiative: “Through his leadership, compassion, and commitment to helping others, Paul has built meaningful connections with families and made a lasting difference in the lives of countless children.”

Cabebe was recruited by Tonnessen several years ago to serve on the board of Friends of the Children’s Justice Center of Maui and knows Tonnessen closely. When families approach MEO wanting to provide foster care, oftentimes they may need extra beds for the new members of the household.

“There are a lot of families that come who want to help, they’re going to foster a child, but they don’t have maybe enough beds for the kids,” Cabebe said. “So the Friends will pay for the beds, usually through Paul’s efforts.”

Tonnessen said he never directly asks people for money.

“When he’s talking to people, talking to donors, he doesn’t even know if they’re donors,” said Sheila Haynes, who has been the board president for the Friends of the Children’s Justice Center of Maui for the past eight years. “What he does is he tells them our story, tells them what our organization is about. He doesn’t ever ask people for money. They just give it to him. He’s a natural. It’s uncanny.”

Haynes, a Hawai’i deputy attorney general who sometimes represents Child Welfare Service in family court, said Tonnesseen never takes his eye off the need for fundraising.

“He’ll meet someone on an airplane. Then the next day or a couple of days later, you got a check for $25,000 or $50,000,” Haynes said. “It’s his enthusiasm and his just obvious passion for the cause that just ignites a desire in people to want to join him. And it’s a beautiful thing.”

The money all is for the bottom line of seeing vulnerable children become well-adjusted, successful adults.

“Nick going into the police academy, that was his dream, something he never would have been able to fulfill if there wasn’t a support system for him,” Tonnessen said.

Mendez said that he wants to help youths like he was when he becomes a Maui Police Department officer. Mendez knows first hand that being there for children in need is perhaps the biggest key to breaking what can become a cycle passed on from generation to generation.

Growing up, the friction between Mendez and his mother, whom he declined to name, led to him being expelled from Kamehameha Schools Maui after his sophomore year and dropping out of King Kekaulike High School as a junior. He eventually was sent to Bobby Benson Center, a drug rehabilitation center on O’ahu where he was treated for marijuana addiction.

“I met real drug addicts there, for sure,” Mendez said. “Guys on heroin, methamphetamine, all kinds of things.”

Mendez said the most important thing Tonnessen helped him with is reconciling with his mother.

“I can’t thank him enough because, again, I love my mom till this day, no doubt about it,” Mendez said. “If she ever needed me, I’m there for her any second.”