Look Great, Feel Better

Some salons’ community service is a cut above

By Kristin Elber

They donate thousands of dollar and a countless number of hours to benefit a cause, a passion. They walk for miles to raise awareness for cancer. They set out bins to collect toys and food and deliver products by the boxful to shelters. They reach out to Northern Virginia and beyond, traveling to Kenya and Afghanistan to start beauty schools. They are your local hairdressers and a driving force of giving in Northern Virginia communities.

“I find that 99.9 percent of the people in this industry, in the beauty industry, are givers,” says Sheila McGurk, founder of Circe Salon Spa in Old Town Alexandria. “That’s just who we are.”

McGurk, along with dozens of other salon owners in the area, is dedicated to giving back to the community that helped her business grow. Donating to local organizations, including Stop Child Abuse Now of Northern Virginia and New Hope Housing, a safe home for those escaping domestic and sexual violence, McGurk acknowledges her own and Circe’s ability to make a difference.

“We really do believe that we’re part of something so much greater than ourselves and that we’re all interconnected and what you do does matter,” says McGurk.

In 2002, McGurk traveled to Afghanistan, where she was brought in as a teacher to the Beauty School of Kabul. It was her role to evaluate and test the students for graduation. That year, 20 women, some of whom could not leave their homes for 11 years and others who spent most of their lives going from basement to basement to avoid bombings, graduated and were given an opportunity to start a new life and make money for themselves.

“I’m a girl from a small town that came and made a difference in someone’s life across the other side of the world,” says McGurk.

Gloria Harding, co-founder of Tranquility Day Spa and Salon in Manassas and Haymarket, knows exactly how much of an impact she can have. The 37-year-old has donated thousands of dollars and a priceless amount of time to the area’s ill and needy through SERVE of Manassas, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and Childhelp. Childhelp, with a home located in Manassas, offers children escaping domestic violence a safe and comfortable environment between the removal from their current situation to placement elsewhere.

“They go from an already very scary situation into, probably for the first time in their lives, a very safe place where loving people are taking care of them,” says Harding.

In addition to the homes, Childhelp has four villages across the country, one of which is located in the Culpeper community of Lignum, where a 280-acre lot is equipped with multiple homes, a school, a barn with horses, gardens and a swimming pool. On a Monday afternoon, Harding brought six of her fellow Tranquility hairstylists to the Lignum village where they offered girls a chance to get both their hair and nails done.

“We just want the girls to feel special,” says Harding. “We made sure to tell every single one of them how beautiful they were.”

Harding reflects on the visit and remembers one little girl who started singing a Taylor Swift song as her hair was being styled. Before long, Harding says, all the others joined in, “singing their little hearts out.” The joy those young girls still had, in spite of all they’d been through, brought tears to Harding’s eyes. She continues to host mini spa days for the girls at the village and now transports children by the busload to her hair academy, also in Manassas, where they get their hair cut for free.

Harding says she feels blessed to be given the talent and the opportunity to give back. She admits giving is like an addiction. So, this October she reached even further as she sent two of Tranquility’s hairstylists joined by members of area churches and another area salon to Kenya where they helped train 15 young women to become hairdressers. The 11-day trip combined spreading the word of God with spreading the knowledge of hairdressing to the Kenyan village. Harding and her husband, salon co-founder Wayne Harding, worked with Beauty Scope, of Chantilly, and Pro Design to donate free hairstyling tools and products to be sent on the trip to be distributed among the Kenyan students.

Through all her giving, Harding says she has grown to realize just what it means to be needy.

“When you surround yourself every once in a while with a little dose of reality … you see that there are real problems,” she says. It has helped her to maintain perspective on her own life and the problems she and those around her face.

Mona Harb, 50, owner of Lofty Salon and Wellness Center in Vienna, says she has felt and seen firsthand the power of giving and the perspective it offers. Inspired and touched by one of her clients with Down syndrome, Harb offered him the salon whenever he needed it. He took her up on the offer and two to three times a year, Harb now opens her two-story salon and studio for Down Syndrome Association meetings, seminars and receptions, free of charge. This past year, her client asked if her salon could serve as the location for their dance, which is now one of Harb’s most memorable community service experiences.

The afternoon of the dance, Harb was exhausted from a stressful, busy day at the salon, fully ready to retreat back to her home when the children began coming through the door. As each one saw her, they spread open their arms, enveloping her in a hug. Her hard day was soon forgotten, and Harb fondly remembers the children dressed up in their tuxes and dresses.

“I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to me to know that you make a difference in someone’s life,” Harb says. “I guess that’s why we’re here.” She donates the use of her building to any group who can benefit from it.

Determined to continue to make a difference in others’ lives, this year Harb began the Mercy Foundation, a non-profit organization started in her mother’s name to help bring hospice to the Third World. Over a year ago, Harb’s mother died of pancreatic cancer. Her dying wish was to take her last breath in her home country of Lebanon. Because hospice does not exist there, in order for her to make the trip, her hospice center here in America supplied her and her family with six months of supplies to take on the trip.

Inspired by hospice care and all the giving her mother had done throughout her lifetime, Harb created the foundation, and was consequently able to move on from her mother’s death.

“Her death caused me to help so many other people,” Harb says in retrospect.

While it was Harb’s mother’s death that sparked her passion for Hospice, it was Annette Haines’s best friend’s death that inspired her fervor for raising ovarian cancer awareness. Haines’s best friend of 48 years died of ovarian cancer. Since then, Haines, co-owner of Hier and Haines Salon in McLean, has made it a point to do all she can to raise awareness of the disease. The 50-year-old distributes bookmarks with ovarian cancer prevention facts, makes and hands out teal recyclable grocery bags, and regularly participates in Walk for the Whisper held at Reston Town Center in May. This year, the walk rose over $115,000 for the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition (NOCC), $7,500 of which came from Haines and the salon.

“I couldn’t save my friend, but if I can save some other young lady from this terrible disease, I want to do that,” says Haines.

In addition to the NOCC, Hier and Haines Salon are regular contributors to SHARE of Mclean, a service for Northern Virginia’s families in need. The salon has donated food, money and $2,000 in hair products to SHARE this past year. In October, the salon held a one-day cut-a-thon where all proceeds were donated to Jill’s House, a home to be built in McLean where children with disabilities can be brought and taken care of to offer parents an opportunity for a break. Haines estimates her salon has donated somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 in services, products and general donations this year.

A part of this sum comes from Haines donating her services to her clients fighting cancer. Like Haines, Beau Totale Salon owner Susan Iacaruso, 51, also donates her services free of charge to her guests for a full year after treatment. If she can make a positive impact in their life during their fight, she will.

“We are so blessed in this industry. We’re the only other industry besides that of a physician or a dentist that has a license to touch people. We control how we choose to touch people,” says Iacaruso.

Iacaruso’s focus lies with her guests and with the fight against breast cancer. While undergoing treatment, one of her guests went to and graduated from nursing school while raising her children. Iacaruso was drawn to her strength and looks to this woman as her hero.

“She just so affected me on a personal level that it’s my crusade now,” Iacaruso says.

Over the past two years, Iacaruso has participated in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, a 40-mile walk over two days in D.C. This year, her team of eight raised over $23,000 of the total $7.2 million for the event, all of which went to the D.C.-Metro area. Though Iacaruso could not walk this year due to a series of injuries, she was determined to do all she could for the event and the cause.

While cancer is often at the forefront of the needs list, in today’s economy a major issue facing many of the salons’ clients is job loss. In a society where appearance is held to significant importance, salon owners are beginning to step in and donate their much-needed services to those re-entering the workforce.

Alexandre de Paris, owner of Alexandre De Paris Beauty Spa Centre in Fairfax, donated three days in June to free haircuts geared to those re-entering the job market. All tips, which totaled $2,500 and an additional $1,000 from the salon, were donated to non-profit clothing and career skills organization, Dress for Success in D.C.

Diane Fisher, owner of Eclips Salon and Day Spa in McLean and Ashburn, gave six free makeovers to women coming out of a women’s shelter who were beginning their search for work, and one of Circe Salon’s stylists began coming in on her day off to give free haircuts to those who had just lost their jobs.

These salons owners, like any heads of business, feel the stresses and importance of making a profit, but the realities of the world do not hold them back. Unlike other businesses, salons have a talent and a service from which anyone can benefit.

“It doesn’t matter what the age is, if you have hair, if you have hands, there’s something we can do for you,” says Harding.

(December 2009)