Kateriland Neighborhood Girl Scouts

Welcome

Hair today, wig tomorrow

Eastpointe girl aims to collect 100 donations for Locks of Love

April 28, 2005

''You can't go back now!'' the 10-year-old girl with the short, curly hair and the big, bright smile said teasingly as her friend took a seat. Behind them loomed a woman with scissors and comb in hand.

Eastpointe resident Amber Fusinski was about to celebrate her 10th birthday in a unique way: by donating her long, light brown locks to Please Care, Share Your Hair. The campaign was conceived by the smiling young hostess, Alexis Olechowski, also of Eastpointe.

Alexis' drive got under way earlier this month outside Trader Joe's grocery store in Royal Oak. She organized the event with a little help from her mother, Jennifer McCall, a Trader Joe's employee, and grandmother Halina Paluch, a hairstylist who snipped the donations, including Amber's.

The seeds of the campaign were planted in the summer of 2001, when Alexis met some children at a Girl Scout camp who had lost their hair to cancer.

''I really wanted to do this for the kids who have cancer,'' Alexis said. ''They were very nice, kind and no different than you or I. I felt bad for them and wanted to help them.''

Last December, Alexis' hair was every bit as long as Amber's, falling halfway down her back. Some time earlier, Paluch, the owner of Halina's Hair Salon in Sterling Heights and a stylist for 36 years, had told Alexis about Locks of Love. The not-for-profit organization provides natural-hair wigs to children with hair loss due to alopecia areata (an autoimmune disorder that causes permanent hair loss), cancer and other diseases.

Alexis, a fifth-grader at Forest Park Elementary School in Eastpointe donated 12 inches to Locks of Love four months ago. But when she learned that the charity needs hair from several people to make just one wig, she wanted to do more.

So Alexis came up with the name -- Please Care, Share Your Hair -- and began planning a hair donation drive.

For sanitary reasons, Alexis, McCall, Paluch and another stylist who works with her, Leslie Tomasiak, set up a makeshift salon in an area outside Trader Joe's. Colorful balloons, artificial palm trees and silver streamers lent a festive air to the scene.

That's where Amber, somewhat apprehensively, made her donation and her mother, Kelly Fusinski, followed suit. So did 26-year-old Fraser native and Trader Joe's employee Jennifer McDonald. And so did McDonald's friend Hillery Delikta of Mt. Clemens and Delikta's niece, 5-year-old Maria Grillo.

The debut event of Please Care, Share Your Hair yielded well over 200 inches of brown, black and blond hair from 20 different female donors ranging in age from 5 to 50-something, each one donating Locks of Love's preferred minimum of 10 inches or more.

They were given flowers and goodie bags filled with treats from Trader Joe's, and a heartfelt ''Thank-you'' from the program's young founder.

Alexis and her mother will ship the hair off to Lake Worth, Fla., where the charity is based, and a few children in need of natural-looking wigs will get them free of charge.

Rebecca Monsour, Alexis' homeroom teacher at Forest Park, said Alexis is ''energetic, outgoing and a wonderful student to have in any classroom. Each day I see her helping her classmates.''

Paluch, the Poland-born woman Alexis calls ''Babcia'' (Grandma in Polish), began volunteering to cut hair for Locks of Love in 2001 and donated four hours of styling expertise at Trader Joe's.

Alexis said she was surprised and satisfied with the success of the first part of her campaign. But she isn't resting on her laurels; she's already busy recruiting more patrons through her church and her school in pursuit of her goal of 100 donors.

As for birthday girl Amber, she bolted out of the chair and ran to a mirror when Paluch finished cutting off a foot of her locks.

''It's SHORT!'' she exclaimed. ''I LOVE it!''