Harbour View students are happy to get shorn for charity

Jack Hart’s year of being teased paid off.

The 10-year-old boy’s blond hair stretched down to his lower back, and some kids would say he looked like a girl.

But other children encouraged him to keep growing his hair so he could donate to Harbour View Elementary School’s annual Locks of Love event, which took place Friday on the grounds of the Huntington Beach school.

Jack was one of 25 kids who got their manes cut in front of their peers and donated the hair to Locks of Love, a nonprofit that accepts the donations, out of which wigs are made for children in the U.S. and Canada who have medical conditions that have caused them to lose their hair.

“Just don’t be scared to do it,” Jack said after a stylist from the Medusa salon in Huntington Beach cut off more than 10 inches of his hair so that his locks now land at his shoulders. “Don’t care what other people think.”

The school adopted the Locks of Love tradition in March 2004 when Cait O’Connell, then a kindergartner at Harbour View, lost her 79-year-old great-grandfather to lung cancer.

At first, the youngster rallied fellow Girl Scouts from Troop 2799 to get their hair cut for Locks of Love.

The following year, Cait and the other Scouts encouraged other students from Harbour View to donate their hair — and a tradition was born.

School officials estimate that over the years, students have cut off more than enough inches of hair to stretch across a football field.

The event, which attracts at least a couple of dozen participants each year, is always fun, said Principal Cindy Osterhout.

“Kids today are already planning for next year and saying they’re going to grow out their hair so they can donate,” she said. “It’s a perpetual assembly that will never go away.”

Regina Halchishak, a stylist at Medusa, said she and three co-workers donated their time at the event.

Nine-year-old Devynn Trang, whose mother is a nurse, said she was excited to hand over 10 inches of her long brown hair.

“I wanted my mom’s patients to have the same confidence that I have when I have my hair,” she said with her fresh shoulder-length bob. “I’m also really excited to have my hair short for summer.”

Isabel O’Connell, Cait’s mother, said the event teaches children at a young age to think about others.

“In the world of today, young people are self-centered, not because they’re not great kids from great families, but because of social media everything is about you and taking selfies,” she said.

“Everything teaches our kids to think about themselves only and not about anyone else. But when they have an opportunity to come to a school like this, they learn there’s something more out there.”

brittany.woolsey@latimes.com

Twitter: @BrittanyWoolsey