SAN JOSE — As a struggling single mother, Falelima Puaauli embraced her children with unconditional love amid sometimes dire conditions while impressing upon them the importance of generosity, community and family.

Her values seeped in. When metastatic cancer claimed her life at age 46 two years ago, her then-teenage son and his girlfriend stepped up to care for his younger siblings and fulfill Puaauli’s wish the family stay together. Facing hardships that often overwhelm many young people, the pair has persevered — though now housing costs driven skyward by the tech boom have added another challenge.

As stomach cancer steadily debilitated Puaauli, her then-teenage son Jack Avamolifua and his girlfriend took on more and more parental responsibilities. Now, they’re raising the four youngest children, ages 5 to 16. Avamolifua, now 22, quit college, expanded his hours at Target and became the legal guardian of his little brother JJ and three sisters. His girlfriend, Hannah Pasby, now 21, moved in with them and has worked a swing shift at a pizza parlor while attending San Jose State.

“We had to mask our feeling and deal with loss,” said Pasby. “The hardest part was the fact that we didn’t know what we were doing.”

For almost two years they managed, ferrying the children to three different schools, dealing with what seemed like overwhelming grief, comforting the youngest, Olina, when she woke up at night shouting for her mother.

Then in May the federal subsidy for their South San Jose home was cut by $450 a month. Electing to move, they’ve run smack into the South Bay’s tight rental market, with soaring rents fueled by the tech boom. For three months they’ve looked fruitlessly for a place, hoping to stay close to the South San Jose schools the children have been attending. Open houses for subsidized rental units turn into madhouses. While several who know them say Avamolifua and Pasby have deftly navigated the shoals that wreck many families, their youth handicaps their housing search. “It’s like a red flag on my application,” Avamolifua said,

Shared home

For now the young family has moved in with Pasby’s parents, and 10 people share a modest four-bedroom home in South San Jose.

For Libby James-Pasby and her husband Lawrence, it was a huge adjustment going from being semi-empty nesters — two older children live at home but aren’t around much — to now shopping at Costco for 10 people.

Pasby helps her father Lawrence, a sales-distributor who is the household’s chef, with cooking. The children do dishes and other chores.

“They’re very good kids,” said James-Pasby, noting they’re slowly emerging from the anguish of losing their mother. James-Pasby said it was a no-brainer to invite the family into their home. “We’ve gained these children we love,” said James-Pasby, who is a literacy director at a San Jose charter school.

The children found a welcoming home, stability and coziness, on a cul-de-sac where they can play with little fear of traffic.

Avamolifua and Pasby are strict, said Leilani, 16, who started her senior year Tuesday at Andrew Hill High. “If we are doing something wrong, or even good, they create a lecture out of a lesson. They push us to do better. That comes from our mom — our mom pushed us to do better with our lives.”

They have impressed those who know or meet them.

“He’s an all-around great employee,” said Ellis Stephens, Avamolifua’s supervisor at East San Jose Target on Silver Creek Road.

Avamolifua said through his mother’s four-year illness, he had assumed many of the family responsibilities, so he knew the logistics — school drop-offs and pick-ups, shopping and entertaining kids.

But dealing with the emotional upheaval of puberty, transition and sorrow was another matter. “That’s the curve ball that gets to me,” he said. “I want to be as much of a parental guardian figure as I can, but I have to remember I’m still their brother.”

And as parents know, each child is different. While Leilani and sister Aulani are tomboys who love playing ball with JJ, 12, their 5-year-old sister Olina is a Disney princess who insists on wearing dresses to school.

Avamolifua has put on hold his dream of becoming an architect. “When I was little, I told my mom I would build her a house so she wouldn’t have to worry about anything,” he said. Later, to distract her from the pain of cancer and debilitating treatment, he would bring her 3-D designs he built in architecture classes at Evergreen Valley College.

That devotion to their mother’s memory helps keep the family going.

Difficult life

Falelima Puaauli was born in Hawaii but sent as a child to San Jose, where she lived with relatives who treated her as little more than a maid. She told Pasby that her life was like Cinderella — doing all the housework, enduring years of verbal abuse, having no options to pursue education — with no prince at the end.

She married young and had five children. Then, as a divorced single mom, she worked as a teacher’s aide, clerk and caretaker. A subsequent relationship produced four more children — whose violent father would often disappear, and later was convicted of molesting Puaauli’s two oldest daughters. He’s now in prison.

Puaauli headed the home and school club at her children’s schools. She would give away just-purchased groceries to families seeking help outside the store, and taught her children to realize that no matter how tough life may seem, someone else has it tougher. She was called “Auntie” by Pasby’s friends, and made people instantly feel like she’d known them for years.

“Living and watching her, I was always humbled,” Avamolifua said. “I try to relay that to these guys,” he added, motioning to his siblings.

Extended family occasionally baby-sits and offers other help. But they face their own challenges. Avamolifua’s father, Lawrence Avamolifua, lives locally with his second wife but has serious health problems and cares for four children. Jack Avamolifua’s three older siblings also have children of their own.

Though Jack Avamolifua’s mother couldn’t always provide her family with electricity, Christmas presents or even dinner, he said, she provided abundant love “and the knowledge that our welfare and success were the most important things” to her.

“She is like a high standard to try to live up to,” said Pasby. “She treated everyone with a lot of love.”

To donate to a fund supporting Jack Avamolifua, Hannah Pasby and four Puaauli children, go to GoFundMe.com/alovinghome.

Contact Sharon Noguchi at 408-271-3775. Follow her at Twitter.com/noguchionk12.