By Lynn Rosellini
"Glamorous," thought Mika Hill, staring at the bald head of the woman seated before her. "I'm going to make you glamorous." The woman once had long, thick, raven-colored hair. But alopecia, an autoimmune disorder, had left her with just a few tufts and a shaken self-image. Hill, a wig maker, was about to change that.
At 30, Hill knows firsthand how a woman feels when she loses her hair. Her own hair fell out several years ago due to an iron deficiency after childbirth. "I cried when I washed it, cried when I combed it, and cried when I looked in the mirror," she says. Then she bought a wig. "It was too small," she says, "but my confidence went up dramatically."
The former U.S. Navy electronics technician enrolled in a wig-making course in New York. Back home in an Atlanta suburb, the mother of two started making custom wigs that she planned to sell for $300 to $800 each.
But many of her clients with alopecia and cancer couldn't afford to pay. And their insurance often didn't cover the cost. Hill started giving the wigs away, eventually spending $10,000 of her own money on supplies and marketing. Last year, Hill and her friend Lita Warren set up Pink Barrette, a nonprofit that has donated about 60 wigs, worth $30,000.
Hill pays for the donations with profits from her custom line. But she and her husband, a real estate investor, have also dipped into their savings to keep the organization afloat.
Hill's clients can't thank her enough. Elyssa Montoya, a 34-year-old Georgia businesswoman with alopecia, was too embarrassed to be seen in public with badly thinning hair. "I didn't feel I could best represent myself bald. Thanks to Mika, I now have beautiful curly hair. I feel good about myself again."
"To see the women's self-confidence soar after they try on their wigs," says Hill, "brings tears to my eyes. This is a mission for me—a most rewarding one."
From Reader's Digest - September 2009