NEWPORT BEACH : Youths Shave Heads to Bolster Ill Friend

After undergoing extensive surgery to remove the last of his cancer-infected lymph nodes, 19-year-old Bob Cook said he felt a little down. But all that changed the next day when a group of nine buddies from his job at the Balboa Ferry walked into his hospital room.

“I was feeling kind of tired and everything, and a couple of them came in and they were all totally bald,” Cook said. “And then I saw the rest of them, and I went, ‘Oh my God, you guys did this for me.’ ”

“Later that day, five other guys came in and they were all totally bald and I just went into shock,” Cook continued.

The young men, who take tolls on the ferry, thought up the stunt in an effort to support their friend and co-worker who was losing his hair because of chemotherapy. Cook said that somebody brought clippers into work one day, and, one by one, they shaved off their sun-drenched locks.

“It was great, I don’t think anybody could have done anything better,” Cook recalled. “It really restores my faith in friendship; you really know people are behind you.”

Cook, a graduate of Corona Del Mar High School, was diagnosed with a uncommon form of muscle cancer last spring. Leaving behind his college studies in business administration at San Diego State University, the blond-haired freshman entered treatment at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills. By May, he had started chemotherapy treatments; a side effect was rapid hair loss.

“It was weird; I could just pull on it and it would come out. And in the shower and stuff it would come out,” the Balboa Island resident said. “It’s kind of discouraging to lose your hair, and so I just said ‘the hell with it’ and had some friends over and shaved it all off.”

Despite the nausea and sickness that accompanies chemotherapy, Cook said that he has done his best to keep up his spirits and not let his sickness depress him or his family. Knowing that the disease is going into remission helps, he said.

“It’s a battle that I’m winning, so it’s easy to be up,” Cook said. “The way I look at it, it’s not really worth getting bummed out about. I have to be strong for my family, because if I get down, then they’ll get down, too.”

And friends say that keeping his spirits up was the main reason for the group action.

“He’s kept a real positive attitude, and that’s part of the reason why we did it, to keep him on the upswing,” said 18-year-old Lance Brooks, a good friend and co-worker. “He was pretty surprised when he saw. He didn’t really know what to say.”

Actually, not everyone was enthusiastic from the start.

“My first reaction was ‘you’re dreaming,’ ” said 18-year-old Lenny Anderson.

Cook, who has a black belt in karate, has spent the last three years off and on working for the ferry company. When he began working there, he said, the job was a prestigious one, and occasionally he would hear girls say that “all the dudes work on the ferry.”

But, unfortunately, he said, not having hair can sometimes work against you.

“I know you’re definitely looked at differently,” he explained, adding that having a bare head is taken as a right-wing political statement, and some of his friends have been called Nazis since shaving off their hair.

“In my situation, I go from being thought of as one of the most hated people to one of the most pitied,” Cook said. “People see me and immediately think that I’m a skinhead, and then I tell people no, it’s cancer . . . and they feel so bad; there’s no one more deserving of pity than someone who has cancer.

“I don’t know,” he added. “You can kind of laugh at it.”