Hair and Tears Are Shed in True ‘Tails of Sacrifice

For ever cursed be this detested day,

Which snatched my best, my fav’rite curl away!

*

Belinda, the heroine who spoke these words in Alexander Pope’s “Rape of the Lock,” threw a hissy fit after a scissors-wielding suitor sneaked up behind her and stole a lock of her hair.

Fourteen girls at Los Angeles High School had entirely different feelings when they had their ponytails cut off. They did it for charity.

Senior Nancy Garcia grew her shiny black hair down to her waist only to give it away, after seeing a television talk show that featured hair donors and sick children who received wigs.

Jessica Gomez, a ninth-grader, remembered visiting a children’s hospital recently and seeing young leukemia patients who had lost their hair because of chemotherapy.

During a recent lunch break on campus, Garcia and Gomez and the other volunteers stepped up to the clear plastic tarp spread over a basketball court, where two Supercuts stylists awaited with scissors and Ziploc bags. Behind a band of yellow tape, hundreds of students gawked or cheered them on.

The hair drive was the brainchild of a leadership class on campus. After getting the idea from advisor Rosanne Altin, a group of students spent weeks researching a Florida-based nonprofit called Locks of Love--www.locks oflove.org--that links hair donors to children with medical hair loss.

In the end, several girls who signed up backed out at the last moment. But one ninth-grader, swept up in the excitement, got a last-minute OK to participate by calling her mother on a cell phone.

“We were only expecting, like, five or six [volunteers],” said senior Rhadora Rabara, one of the organizers. “We were really surprised.”

When her turn came, 10th-grader Elba Cortez pressed her fingers hard against her eyes to stop the tears.

A KIIS-FM deejay who was invited to the event took one look at Elba’s wispy black hair--it reached down to her knees--and shouted into a microphone: “Let’s show her some support! She’s giving away her entire life!” The students cheered.

Stylist Vickie Vargas tied Elba’s hair into a ponytail just above the shoulder. A band member started a drumroll. And then, snip, snip, snip, and the stylist waved a 35-inch-long handful of hair in the air. The students cheered some more.

“I feel kind of sad because I’ve had my hair so long,” Elba said afterward, her eyes still moist. “I’ve never cut it. I never dyed it. I never put anything in my hair.” Her older brother, Saul, a senior, hugged her. Elba said her mom had been against the idea, but relented when she saw her daughter was determined.

Her friend Anna Angeles, a 10th-grader with waist-length hair since she was a little girl, worried about what her father would say when she got home.

“My dad always wanted me to have long hair,” Anna said. “He said a woman with long hair is beautiful.”

Altin, the advisor, said the school was galvanized by the hair drive in a way she had never seen. Girls with long hair said their schoolmates were constantly “bugging them” to participate.

The ponytails, sealed in plastic storage bags, will be shipped off to Lake Worth, Fla., this week. Jennifer Cox, executive director of Locks of Love, said the organization gets between 1,500 and 1,800 ponytails of various lengths, textures and colors each week. It has received hair from donors across the country, as well as Japan, Australia, Belgium, France and England. About 10 ponytails, which yield roughly 140,000 usable hairs, go into a single wig.

About half of the ponytails received turn out to be unusable, either because they are chemically damaged, unbound or too short. Those either get discarded or sold to help support the 5-year-old organization, which has a staff of four and a dozen volunteers.

Recipients, all of them children from low-income households, have lost their hair because of different ailments. Three percent are cancer patients. Others are burn victims or compulsively yank out their own hair. Many suffer from an autoimmune skin disease called alopecia areata, which prevents hair growth.

Shannon Fields, 18, who has received two wigs from Locks of Love, said she admires the donors. She remembers watching a biker with hair “down to his butt” give up his hair for charity. “It’s something that takes courage,” said Fields, who lives in Tampa, Fla.

When Shannon’s hair fell out from alopecia at age 15, her mother could only afford cheap wigs, which became the target of teasing schoolmates. “I wouldn’t go out of the house even to get the mail,” she recalled.

The hairpieces Locks of Love provides have a silicone scalp that seals airtight over a person’s head, said Greg Taylor, president of Millbrae, Calif.-based Taylormade Hair Replacement, which makes wigs for the organization. “You could literally pick the person up by the hair of their head, and the product would not come off,” Taylor said with confidence, although he has never tried it.

And the donors at Los Angeles High?

The bell signaling the end of the lunch period rang, sending students scurrying back to class. The girls with butchered hair stayed behind, waiting their turn to get a decent-looking trim.