Act of Love: 11-year-old donates to Locks of Love
Published 10:17 pm Tuesday, May 12, 2009
EVERETT — Somewhere another little girl is waiting for Rebecca Casey’s hair.
The 11-year-old has had more than two years to think about that girl, the one who will slip on a hairpiece fashioned from Rebecca’s foot-long tresses with the help of a charity group, Locks of Love.
The nonprofit organization takes donated hair and creates wigs for children who have lost hair because of treatments for cancer or other medical conditions.
Tuesday afternoon, Rebecca climbs into a chair at Dzine Salon in Everett, finally ready to send her hair on its way.
The stylist gently soaps and rinses and sections Rebecca’s hair. The stylist has her stand so she can measure just how long the hair has grown.
Yes, it’s finally 12 inches.
For a moment, Rebecca’s hair falls down her back, thick and wavy and the color of shortbread cookies.
Then the scissors.
This isn’t the first time the girl from Monroe has cut her hair for charity. At age 8, her mother encouraged her to try it. This time it’s Rebecca who is determined to do it.
When the first chunk of hair falls away, Rebecca doesn’t flinch. But this girl — so talkative a moment before — grows still, quiet.
She’s thinking about someone else too: her grandmother.
She passed away when Rebecca was a toddler, so long ago she doesn’t harbor a memory.
Rebecca does keep a photograph taped to her bedroom headboard. Grandma is hairless, sick with breast cancer. She’s holding baby Rebecca at Seattle Children’s Hospital the day she was born seven weeks premature.
The stylist gently lays long sections of hair on a tray.
Rebecca’s knees are tucked up in the chair, her pink fuzzy flip-flops poking out from under the styling cape, as the stylist fashions a bob cut.
When her haircut is finished, Rebecca turns her chin, examines her new bob from every angle.
She likes it.
And she’ll do it again.
Debra Smith: 425-339-3197, dsmith@heraldnet.com
Locks of Love
Rebecca Casey donated her hair to Locks of Love, a nonprofit organization that provides hairpieces to children who have lost their hair from cancer or other medical conditions. Her 9-year-old sister, Loryn, and her mother, Jen Casey, also donated hair to the Florida-based group. For more information, go online to www.locksoflove.org or 561-833-7332.
