Here Today, Hair Gone Tomorrow

While many tweens are thinking little past themselves, 12-year-old Natalie Rea has been thinking of young children who have are battling cancer. She has spent the last year and a half growing her hair out so she could donate a large chunk of it to an organization that creates wigs for people who have hair loss from the effects of radiation treatments.

“I learned about (the program) when I was getting my haircut,” said Natalie, daughter of Tim Rea and former Dixonite Crystal Gaulke-Rea.

Natalie waited for a visit to her Dixon Grandparents, Bert and Arlene Gaulke, before cutting it.

“I always wanted to do volunteer work so when I heard about it, I told my mom I wanted to grow my hair out,” she said, adding that both her parents do volunteer work and she helps at her church’s Vacation Bible School each summer.

 “It’s really quite spectacular that young people want to grow their hair out specifically to donate,” said Jaime Melville of who runs her business above the , “We’ve cut hair quite a bit over the years for ‘Locks of Love,” she said.

According to their website, Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 21 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis.

 They say they meet a unique need for children by using donated hair to create the highest quality hair prosthetics and provide free or based on financial need. Most of the children helped by Locks of Love have lost their hair due to a medical condition called alopecia areata, which has no known cause or cure. The prosthesis provides help to restore self-esteem and confidence, enabling the children to face the world and their peers.

 Natalie tied 13 inches of her hair into a ponytail and shipped it off to the organization and is anxious to sport her new hair to friends in her soccer and music activities this summer.

 “The cut is real short in the back and longer in the front,” said her grandmother. “I told her she’d probably run a little faster.”

Natalie recently broke a school record for doing the 100-yard dash in 13 seconds and said the best thing about her long hair was that she could do so much more with it by donating it to Locks of Love.

“But I do think the new short cut is cute,” she said. For more information on donating hair, it is suggested that people do research on acceptable charities through the Better Business Bureau or other online resources. Locks of Love meets the 20 Standards for Charity Accountability from the BBB.