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| Wigs
for Kids
Looking
back over the past 25 years, Wigs for Kids founder Jeffrey
Paul cannot believe his incredible journey.
He was
a successful hairdresser with a thriving business. He traveled
all over the world to work with powerful presidents and gorgeous
models. But one day, his 12-year-old niece walked into his
salon, crying. She tearfully begged him to stop her hair from
falling out. When I saw the look in her father’s eyes,
I knew it was something serious. It turned out that
she had just been diagnosed with leukemia.
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“Uncle
Jeff, you know I’ve been trying to get on the gymnastics team
all my life,” she cried. “My hair is going to be falling
out when it’s time to try out.”
Although chemotherapy
would help save her life, it would also leave her with no hair.
“I promised her that she would have hair,” Paul says.
“And when you make a promise to a child, you keep it.”
He did some research
and learned that designing wigs for children is complicated because
kids are smaller and more active than adults. So, he worked with
doctors and prosthetics specialists to devise a hairpiece that would
withstand typical kid activities, such as swimming, gymnastics,
and sleepovers. They came up with a wig that adhered to the scalp
under the most aggressive conditions. And if it got wet, it would
look like everybody else’s hair, because every strand of hair
was hand-tied.
Paul’s niece was
fitted with her wig in time for her gymnastics competition. “My
heart was pounding as my wife and I sat in the stands,” he
recalls. “And when my niece jumped off the apparatus, she
looked up into the stands at us and pointed to her head. Tears ran
down my face. I knew that God was taking me to another place in
my life. The time was right for me to reach out.”
He got his chance after
a local newspaper ran his niece’s story. Wanting to do something
good for the community, he asked readers to send him their old wigs,
which he would then refurbish and donate to needy patients. “The
next day, I received 500 wigs that were beyond repair,” Paul
says. “People meant well, but they sent us wigs they had been
in their closets since the 1950s. So my wife and I used our own
money to start a wig bank.” In no time, word got out that
he was helping children and adults who needed wigs.
Soon, instead of cutting
and styling hair, Paul was custom designing full-cranium prosthetics,
or wigs, for children and adults who lost their hair due to medical
conditions. To this day, each handcrafted wig is made of about 150,000
strands of natural hair. The individual strands of hair are hand-tied
onto the foundation of the wig, which is created from a mold of
the person’s head for a snug fit. “I learned on the
job and asked some great people to teach me what I didn’t
know,” he says. “Quite by accident, I became an innovator.”
Paul didn’t accept
hair donations at first. But one day a woman who had cancer came
to see him with her daughter who had hair so long she was sitting
on it. “Her beautiful, natural blonde hair hadn’t been
cut in 18 years,” he explains. “After her mother’s
consultation, her daughter said, ‘Mom, I want to cut my hair
for you.’ After we all dried our tears, I realized that this
child could give her mother nothing more.
The mother was so moved that I said I would do it.”
It didn’t take
long for the company to grow. “I’d always been an educator
and motivational speaker, so I trained people all over the world
to do what we were doing: restoring beautiful hair by creating wigs
for children, women, and men,” Paul says. He also educates
medical professionals and social workers about the hair replacement
options available to cancer patients.
“There were a lot
of kids in need,” he recalls. “The business was getting
bigger than we could handle out of our pockets.” So on behalf
of Wigs for Kids, he filed for, and received, non-profit status.
Now, volunteers sort the donations of hair, answer questions, speak
at schools, and hold fundraisers. “We’re a small organization
on the inside, so we can make a big impact on the outside,”
Paul says.
In addition, hairdressers
volunteer their time and services to cut donor’s hair or cut
the hair on the wigs for the children who need them. “Hairdressers
who style the wigs touch the children in a special way, because they
are able to do something most people can’t do,” he says.
“The experience is beyond what you can imagine. It’s
not sad, it’s inspirational.”
If you would
like additional information on Wigs for Kids, please visit our Web
site at www.wigsforkids.org
or call (440) 333.4433.
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