Haircuts for the homeless at Juilliard Park

April Fraser can’t see it but she can feel it. She reaches up to touch her hair, checking out the freshly cut layers that feather flatteringly around her face.

“Oh my God. It’s so cute,” she exclaimed. She pivots in the direction of hairdresser Danika O’Leary and blurts out, “I want to give you a hug.”

“Good,” said O’Leary, a 28-year-old with black hair and a heart of platinum. “I could use it.”

Hairdressers may get their share of hugs from happy customers like brides and prom-going teen-age girls who feel their future rests on looking right. But on this day, O’Leary’s customers are thrilled simply to be looking like everyone else.

Every few weeks O’Leary, a licensed beautician, offers up a personal gift to the neediest people in the community. She packs her scissors, combs, gel, gloves and other haircutting equipment along with a rented generator and sets up an alfresco salon where the homeless congregate, usually Juilliard Park in downtown Santa Rosa. Homeless and needy people line up for tickets, sometimes waiting several hours for a free haircut, no strings, sermon or lecture attached.

Her reward is seeing all those attractive and happy faces emerge from beneath straggly hair and heavy beards, some of Biblical proportions. For most it’s the first haircut they have had in months or even years.

Fraser, 56, only recently lost her eyesight to macular degeneration. She became homeless when the boyfriend with whom she was living died. After staying in a hotel, she was taken in by friends.

But on Supplemental Security Income of less than $1,000 a month, it’s difficult to find permanent housing she can afford.

A haircut? That would be just about on the very bottom of her priority list, or on the list of anyone living on the streets or in their car, or even struggling to buy groceries or gas to get to work.

Expert hands

“I get a haircut maybe once a year, or rarely twice a year. This feels good,” said Fernando Cruz, who had stopped by on this sunny Sunday morning after noticing the barber chair. It was brought by O’Leary’s friend and fellow barber Kyle Ryner, who drove up from Redwood City to lend an extra set of expert hands and lugged the professional chair to a spot under a tree.

A 43-year-old father of four, Cruz says he can only find enough construction work for two to three days a week. He struggles to pay the rent.

That is why O’Leary was inspired to reach out the people in her community who may be shunned or looked down upon because they look disheveled, not because they don’t care, but because they can’t afford a haircut or shaving materials.

The Irish Catholic O’Leary doesn’t judge or pry for personal details, although she will patiently listen to anyone’s story when it’s offered - a required skill of any hair cutter.

She has turned her body into a canvas of tattoo art, much of it inspirational and symbolic, and has etched onto her chest a declaration, “Only God can judge me,” a tattoo she got when she was still a teenager.

“It’s amazing the transformation of someone who looks like they’ve been homeless for years and years and all of a sudden they look like a 25-year-old kid,” she said, after a haircut.

Free agent

O’Leary is not the only hair cutter who donates her services to the homeless. But most do it through organizations like The Redwood Gospel Mission, for which O’Leary has also volunteered.

Primarily, though, she is a free agent, setting up on her own every several weeks, and spreading the word through tickets and fliers. She may put out a call for help through Facebook; her hashtag is #freehaircutsinthepark.

The only people who get turned away are those who obviously have the money to pay. A mother driving a new GMC Yukon filled with kids who pulls up alongside the park for a freebie is firmly sent on her way.

Little ruffles this good-natured and self-sufficient O’Leary, who works full-time at Phoenix Hair & Body in Petaluma while completing a training program in phlebotomy at Empire College. But she seethes at the thought of those who would take advantage.

Commitment to cause

O’Leary’s friends marvel at her commitment to her cause, giving up her only day off to work with hair that may not have been washed in a long time.

“People just don’t do stuff like that nowadays,” her friend James Barker said. “They’re more concerned with themselves. Danika puts others before herself. I just find it completely amazing that people like her still exist.”

She embarked on her personal haircutting mission several years ago when she was in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, waiting to catch an Irish punk concert at The Warfield music hall. On her way from the parking lot, her eyes settled on a panhandler.

“She looked like she was maybe 30 years old and just broke. She had a two-year-old sitting with her. She just looked like she didn’t feel good about herself. I didn’t want her to be offended but I also have this set of skills. It just hit me. I had my shears in the trunk of my car. I had two hours before the concert. I asked, ‘Would you like a haircut?’ ”

O’Leary opened her trunk, pulled out her shears and sat the woman on a crate.

“She just wanted the knots and stuff out. I sprayed on a little conditioner and ran a comb through and trimmed her up and she felt great,” she said.

“I haven’t seen her since, but I’m hoping maybe that little bit made her look better and gave her the confidence to go out and maybe do a little better than whatever put her in that situation.”

No sink

O’Leary is careful about sanitation, even though she can’t wash hair because she has no tank or sink. She does rent a generator to run her electric clippers. She uses hand sanitizer and for any clients with a bit of odor she uses some conditioner with a floral smell.

O’Leary, a Rancho Cotati High School graduate who lives with her grandmother in Rohnert Park and helps her out with basic needs, will often put out the word to fellow hairdressers to see if anyone wants to help.

Ryner stepped up, and another friend, Aimee Dietrick, 30, arrived on this Sunday to keep track of the waiting list and assist.

She said she’s been ripped off only once. Someone lifted a pair of shears. She shrugs it off, telling herself maybe they needed them more than she does.

“I’ve had a police officer come up to me and say, “I’m not going to write you a ticket. I’m not going to make you go away. You’re doing something good. Just be careful.’”

Living for several years with her father in Detroit, a city ravaged by job losses and poverty, gave her a different perspective as she saw how anyone is vulnerable to hard times and how good it is when people help each other.

“I really like the way people in my neighborhood took care of each other,” she said.

“If somebody was out of work, other families would help take care of things. My own father liked to hunt. I would bring home something extra and pack it in the freezer and give it to the families that need it.”

Wide range of people

O’Leary makes her pilgrimage to Juilliard every few weeks, so her free clients know where they can go when they need a trim.

A wide cross-section of people of all ages and different stories make their way to her chair. There is Megan, an 18-year-old former high school basketball star who said her father threw her out several months ago and now she lives with friends on the street. On the other end of life is the 60-year-old man who said he’s been on the streets for seven years.

“I was a dental lab tech for many years specializing in orthodontic appliances. But it all went overseas,” he said, his voice betraying resignation but not self-pity. “My uncle was a dental lab tech back when he could own a home and his wife stayed home and he put his kids through college. Now even if both you and your wife are lab techs you couldn’t do that.”

He expresses his pain and faith through poetry, which he recites to O’Leary as she trims his beard and a few straggly locks. With only a few snips he goes from derelict to distinguished looking. Perhaps someone will look at him differently, see the humanity, O’Leary hopes.

“They’re still people. They’re having hard times,” she said, explaining what brings her to the park Sunday after Sunday. “If I was in that same spot I’d also want loving care.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.