O’Connor students have hair‑razing experience
School rallies around fund‑‘razor’ for cure
by Ambria Hammel

PHOENIX – Ian Michels, a senior at Sandra Day O’Connor High School simply calls it his “summer‑do.” At least two fellow students may call it a gracious act of charity.

Michels was one of more than 30 students and staff members who volunteered to have their heads shaved May 5 during the school’s second Shave Your Head for a Cure event benefitting Samantha Thorn and Kendra Raymond, two teens fighting cancer. Their stylists: fellow O’Connor students.

These ad hoc stylists won a raffle drawing and the right to choose whose head they wanted to shave. STUGO, the school’s student government who helped coordinate the event, raised more than $800 from the sale of raffle tickets. Proceeds will be split three ways: two‑thirds will go to the teens and one‑third will be used to purchase crafts and games for Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

“I think some of them (the students) are on the challenge that they want to shave your head to see how bad they can make you look,” said Greg Rice before the razor landed, although he admitted he didn’t have a lot to lose, acknowledging his already short head of hair. Rice teaches health and fitness at O’Connor in addition to coaching girls golf and baseball. He was one of many returning volunteers at what is becoming an annual event.

Susan Mazzarella estimated half had their heads shaved last year, too. Mazzarella, the school’s athletic equipment clerk, organized Shave Your Head for a Cure in 2005 on behalf of Thorn, her daughter, after looking at her daughter’s head during chemo‑ therapy. She thought the head shaving experience would give the donors an opportunity to empathize with what Thorn endured during treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

“This year they got a little creative. Some teachers got a mohawk, Some got a Homer Simpson cut,” Mazzarella said. “Some called later and asked, ‘Please, please, please just fix my hair.”

Everyone who volunteered to have their head shaved agreed to stick out the day sporting their new ‘do, even if that meant looking like a salon school refugee for a few hours.

Many volunteers enthusiastically signed up to have their heads shorn even if they didn’t directly know the students. Dan Weber, O’Connor’s assistant baseball coach and math and history teacher, doesn’t personally know either of the girls, but learned from other teachers and coaches of the tough situations they have faced. He has always had short hair, but agreed to have it cropped to the skull after students asked him to do it. Weber said it was a small thing he could do to help the cause.