Seven years ago, Villemure turned her South Rockwood hair salon, Unique Enhancements, over to her daughter so she could spend more time on the nonprofit she founded to help bald kids look normal. "That's all I do, and it's full-time, let me tell you -- it's a lot of hours. This year, we have done over 200 children, and we have not even tapped the amount of children out there that need to be helped," Villemure said. "Our program is totally free. We're the only totally free program in the entire world that we know of." How is it possible to give kids wigs that would cost as much as $5,000 on the commercial market? "Through fund-raising. Private donations. A few grants, which are getting harder and harder to get all the time," said Villemure. The group's big fund-raiser is Saturday. And Children with Hairloss accepts donations of hair eight inches or longer. When cut to be donated, hair should be clean and tied in a ponytail. When Mikayla left Children with Hairloss with that first temporary synthetic wig seven years ago, she knew things would change for the better. "I was so happy! I was so happy!" she said. "The kids are OK now. They accept me now. One girl didn't know and just found out. She was like, 'I love your hair!' She didn't know it was a wig."
Togo RPCV Joel Thurtell writes: Regina Villemure provides wigs for children, teens with cancer
Hair loss needn't be heartache
South Rockwood stylist helps provide wigs for children, teens with baldness
October 28, 2007
BY JOEL THURTELL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Caption: Regina Villemure shapes a mold on Mikayla Marcero's head as Barbara Walker of South Rockford looks on. Photo: Madalyn Ruggiero
The baldness that came to Jerry Marcero all of a sudden in his 49th year was not a psychological knockout to the Carleton real estate appraiser.
Sure, he lost all the hair on his head and everywhere else. For the first six months it was "freaky," but one day in the shower he looked at his bottle of shampoo and wondered, "What do I need this stuff for?"
Marcero has alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that causes people to lose some or all of their hair. According to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation, five million people in the United States suffer from the disease. It which occurs when "hair follicles are mistakenly attacked by a person's own immune system (white blood cells), resulting in the arrest of the hair growth stage," according to the nonprofit's Web site at www.naaf.org. "Onset most often begins in childhood and can be psychologically devastating."
While Marcero is OK with being bald, the same can't be said for his daughter. Two years after his hair dropped out, Marcero's then 7-year-old daughter, Mikayla, lost all the hair on her head -- even her eyebrows and eyelashes -- in just four days.
"I didn't know what people would think, and I didn't want everyone making fun of me," Mikayla said.
Marcero talked to the principal at St. Patrick's School in Carleton. The principal spoke to Mikayla's classmates. Jerry recalled that the principal "let them know that Mikayla, then in second grade, wasn't feeling good and would be wearing a bandanna, and the kids accepted it pretty good."
"Not really," said Mikayla, who will be 14 on Monday. "They didn't really accept it at first. They would call me names. They said, 'Baldies aren't allowed to pray here.' I just kept a straight face."
How did it make her feel?
"Sad."
Mikayla's dismay became more intense as her first communion neared. So her parents took her for a ride to South Rockwood to Children with Hairloss, where a retired hairstylist named Regina Villemure offered help. She couldn't restore Mikayla's hair, but she could do the next best thing. She fitted Mikayla for a wig to be made of human hair, and sent her home with a synthetic hairpiece just in time for her first communion.
The wig made a profound difference in her life. Before Mikayla left the offices of Children With Hairloss, Regina had made a plaster mold of Mikayla's head. She sent the mold to a wig manufacturer, and six weeks later, Regina placed a custom-made wig with human hair on Mikayla's head.
Suddenly, Mikayla looked normal. Gone were the head scarves. Each year since, Mikayla's parents have taken her back to Children with Hairloss so Regina could make a new mold for a fresh wig, perfectly sized to their daughter's growing head.
Normally, a wig of this quality would cost $3,500 to $5,000. Health insurance won't cover the cost, said Marcero. Even so, Mikayla and kids like her who have lost hair due to medical conditions get a wig free from Children with Hairloss once a year until they're 21.
Villemure was a hairdresser and saw the need for helping hairless kids when her niece was treated for cancer at the age of 3 nearly a quarter-century ago. The little girl lost her hair, and in those days, Villemure said: "There wasn't anything nice for kids to wear. You'd take an adult wig and chop it down and it wasn't worth it because they were so ugly."
Villemure helped her niece find wigs, but back then, even adult wigs were easily recognized as fake.
"The machine-made ones always have a thicker base to them," she said. "There's nothing ugly about them today. They're made of human hair, and the base is so nice and thin and they're hand-tied. Technology has just changed. When they say, 'You've come a long way, baby,' let me tell you, they've come a long way because they're natural-looking from the scalp coming out."
Seven years ago, Villemure turned her South Rockwood hair salon, Unique Enhancements, over to her daughter so she could spend more time on the nonprofit she founded to help bald kids look normal.
"That's all I do, and it's full-time, let me tell you -- it's a lot of hours. This year, we have done over 200 children, and we have not even tapped the amount of children out there that need to be helped," Villemure said. "Our program is totally free. We're the only totally free program in the entire world that we know of."
How is it possible to give kids wigs that would cost as much as $5,000 on the commercial market? "Through fund-raising. Private donations. A few grants, which are getting harder and harder to get all the time," said Villemure.
The group's big fund-raiser is Saturday. And Children with Hairloss accepts donations of hair eight inches or longer. When cut to be donated, hair should be clean and tied in a ponytail.
When Mikayla left Children with Hairloss with that first temporary synthetic wig seven years ago, she knew things would change for the better.
"I was so happy! I was so happy!" she said. "The kids are OK now. They accept me now. One girl didn't know and just found out. She was like, 'I love your hair!' She didn't know it was a wig."
Contact JOEL THURTELL at 248-351-3296 or thurtell@freepress.com.
