TAKING NOTES:

Last summer, Daily Pilot Managing Editor Brady Rhoades and I had breakfast at Mimi’s Café in Costa Mesa with two members of THINK Together, www.thinktogether.org/,an after-school program for low-income students.

Prior to the breakfast, I had cursory knowledge of the group, as we had written about them in the past and I’d seen THINK Together announcements and press releases over the years.

After the breakfast, though, I was sorry that I hadn’t paid more attention to this fledgling enterprise.

This week, we all learned that someone big was paying attention, as the Irvine Co. President ( www.irvinecompany.com) Don Bren shelled out $8.5 million to THINK Together, a sum that could well change the lives of hundreds if not thousands of kids who may have previously been doomed to a life of poverty and crime.

THINK Together took root in the depths of Costa Mesa’s slums, the notorious Shalimar Street neighborhood.

Long known as a home to gangs and criminals, residents of the Shalimar area vowed to fight back in the 1990s and THINK Together, a nonprofit organization founded in 1994 by Randy Barth, a successful business executive and chief executive, has become a major part of that fight.

That morning at breakfast, we met with Sue Ann Gonis, the group’s chief development officer, and Sam Anderson, one of THINK Together’s original volunteers.

Anderson, a dead ringer for President Lyndon B. Johnson and himself a former pharmaceutical company chief executive, told of the lives he has seen changed forever by THINK Together.

He spoke of the joy he gets by seeing children who, with the help of the after-school program, ended up going to major universities and then coming back to help others go that same path by becoming volunteers themselves.

The key to the success of these students: education.

Or as the THINK Together acronym says: “Teaching, Helping, Inspiring and Nurturing Kids.”

Since those early Shalimar days, THINK Together has expanded to 180 centers, helping children in school districts in Orange, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

“We serve more than 20,000 students every day, making THINK Together one of the largest after school program providers in the United States,” the group’s website states. “We partner with schools, parents and the community, to provide a fun and safe place for students to learn and grow. While our public/private partnership programs are known simply as THINK Together, we also offer THINK Together CARE for parents who are in need of before and after school care for their children.”

We hear a lot about those who want to “improve” Costa Mesa. In fact, former Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor recently penned an op-ed piece in the Daily Pilot touting his many accomplishments toward that goal.

I’m not here to quarrel with any of those. But what would be really impressive to me would be to see Mansoor, Mayor Eric Bever and other leaders in the improver group follow the lead of Don Bren and improve the people of Costa Mesa, not just the appearance of Costa Mesa.

Because that’s what THINK Together really does. It takes those who have little opportunity and opens multiple doors for them, creating new generations of community leaders along the way. That’s real improvement. And I guess that makes Bren the ultimate Costa Mesa improver.

I want to remind readers that if you have stories you’d like to tell us about that we haven’t gotten around to, there is an option.

Do you have a big event in your neighborhood that the media always ignores? Did your daughter’s AYSO team win its big match up and nobody got to read about it?

Now’s your time to change that. Call it do-it-yourself journalism or citizen journalism, but whatever you call it just go to www.dailypilot.com/townhall and submit your news and sports stories and photos to us online.

An editor will review the stories for publication. It will be published online quickly and the print publishing will come soon after. I look forward to seeing your stories.

TONY DODERO is the director of news and online for the Daily Pilot. He can be reached at (714) 966-4608 or at tony.dodero@latimes.com.