One haircut and ‘You look good, you feel good.’ This Hartford event plans 100 and here’s why.
A chance meeting between a community health care worker and a barber shop owner who was once homeless has led to a projection of at least 100 haircuts Sunday for people experiencing homelessness.
“It just was this match made in heaven,” regarding the chance meeting, said Kelly Toth, nurse practitioner and system director of neighborhood health operations for Hartford HealthCare.
Toth said she was walking by Wise Guys Scissor Society Barber Shop at 87 Main St. in Hartford when owner Miguel Delvalle came out and said, “I love nurses, I love Hartford Healthcare, my wife is a nurse.”
Then Delvalle told her he was once homeless and he wanted to give back.
It was music to Toth’s ears because she knows how a haircut can make a crucial difference. In many cases, until a person’s basic needs are met — a place to sleep, food and hygiene — they can’t can’t focus on higher level medical needs, she said.
Hartford HealthCare partnered in February with Delvalle who has arranged for seven barbers and five stylists to donate their time at the “No Hair Left Behind’ event from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday at South Church on 270 Main St.
The day will will include an offering of full medical services, proper fitting shoes from Footwear with Care, boxed lunches and and breakfasts.
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”Our goal is 100 haircuts,” Toth said. “We’re just so excited.”
Delvalle, whose barber shop is next door to the South Park Inn Homeless Shelter, said, “It was a no-brainer,” when Toth asked him to help. He has done a lot in the community quietly to help veterans, people experiencing homelessness and others in need, but never anything of this magnitude.
”I was once homeless, so I’m always looking for a way to give back,” Delvalle said. “I wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows. As soon as the tables started to turn I always looked to give back to the less fortunate.”
Delvalle said he was homeless from when he was 16 to 18 years old and had to change many of his ways to be successful. Delvalle said haircuts are important on many levels.
He said if a person is having a “terrible day,” in that one hour and 20 minutes they get a haircut and a hot towel shave, “We are your therapist.”
”That client-to-barber relationship can lift a burden,” he said.
Another important aspect of a good haircut, he said, is that, “You look good, you feel good.”
A great haircut can “change your life,” he said, by leading to meeting a partner or landing a job.
“It can literally change your life,” Delvalle said. “Spending time in the barber changed my life.”
Delvalle said becoming a barber “saved my life.”
“My wife is a nurse. She’s the reason I have structure. All the credit goes to her,” he said. “She was in nursing school and because of her caring personality said, ‘Dude, you have to get it together.’ Then our lives completely changed.”
Delvalle, 35, now is a business owner and homeowner.
“It all came together so effortlessly. Sometimes I have to pinch myself,” he said.
Toth said the community team from Hartford HealthCare has “embedded” themselves in the community and come up with ideas to help at every level. Having a hair-cutting event was on the list.
“We offer all these medical services, but realized people put those things on the back burner to have a safe place to lay their head, food and hygiene,” Toth said. “Then they’re able to think about higher things.”
Toth said she asked one woman in a clinic, “Can I please wash your hair?” It was so matted the woman said to just cut it off. Toth used trauma shears.
“She walked out of there feeling like a brand new woman and she was thankful,” Toth said.
