Hairdresser Alfred Sainz transforms outlooks along with appearances, volunteering his time to help terminally ill patients.
By LANE DeGREGORY
Published March 2, 2004
[Times photo: Ken Helle]
Alfred Sainz lavishes his attention on Ocie Rowland, 55, who has congestive heart failure. It was a rare repeat visit for Sainz, who tells Rowland, “You’ve got great hair.”
BRANDON - Alfred Sainz checks the address, then pulls his Blazer into the driveway. He parks, reaches into the back seat and grabs his black satchel.
He starts down the crumbling walk, staring at the old house. He remembers this carport, packed with boxes and blankets, old appliances and who knows what. He remembers the man inside.
In this line of work, Sainz seldom gets to make repeat visits. But last week, a hospice worker called and said the man needed him again. Could he come? Soon?
It's almost noon now. Sainz knocks on the front door. A faint, raspy voice answers from inside: "It's open."
Down a dark hall in the back of the house, a barefoot man in striped pajamas slumps in a worn recliner by the sink. Sainz walks toward him, his right hand outstretched. The man in the chair struggles to stand. Then he falls back, wheezing. When he catches his breath, he says, "I remember you.
"You made me look like Kenny Rogers."
A reason to get out of bed
Ocie Rowland is 55, but he looks much older. Oxygen tubes loop across his sunken cheeks. His crutches are propped against his easy chair.
A decade ago, when he was well, his brown hair curved down his neck in smooth waves, "like Elvis," he says proudly. More than a dozen surgeries and years of medications killed the color, stole the curl. Now, Rowland's hair is pure white, thick and straight. It spills over his ears, tangling in the oxygen lines.
"So you want me to do it in here?" Sainz asks, setting his satchel by the sink.
Rowland tries to smile. "Can't get much further," he says.
Rowland used to drive grocery trucks for Albertson's. These days he doesn't go anywhere. He has congestive heart failure; only 12 percent of his heart is working. He's been under the care of LifePath Hospice of Tampa for more than a year.
His wife, Brenda, looks after him, but she has to work. So Rowland spends most weekdays alone. Many days, he's too weak to get out of bed.
This morning, though, he managed to shower, wash his hair, shave and drag himself into the kitchen. He had something to look forward to.
"I used to be beautiful'
Dying people need more than doctors. Often, especially in your last days, it's the little things that help you feel alive.
Someone to talk to. Someone to listen to, so you don't drown in your own thoughts. Someone to slide his fingers through your hair and massage your scalp and blow-dry your new style and let you remember how it felt to look good.
After 30 years of cutting hair, Sainz knows this: The better you look, the better you feel. So most Mondays, when his Hair Performance salon in Tampa is closed, he drives around Hillsborough County giving free haircuts to patients of LifePath Hospice - people who can't get to a barber or the beauty parlor, folks who are too tired to hold up their heads.
Sometimes he has to climb over hospital bed railings to clip curls. Sometimes he has to work around IV lines, hearing aids or bald spots where chemo staked its claim. Sometimes his patients haven't been shampooed in months. Sometimes they can't sit up. Sometimes he's the only visitor the person gets except nurses.
"An old woman once took my hand and told me, "I used to be beautiful,' " Sainz says. "Everyone needs to be able to hold on to those feelings."
He listens to people's aches and pains. He learns their life stories. And as he transforms their appearance, he changes their outlook.
Sometimes, the people he helps most aren't even the people whose hair he touches.
In the bag
Sainz unzips his bag and starts pulling out instruments: clippers and thinning shears, edgers and a pick, three kinds of combs, two white towels, a blow dryer and an extension cord. He fills a silver spray bottle at the kitchen sink. He fastens a taupe drape around Rowland's sagging shoulders.
"You've got great hair," Sainz says, finger-combing the long strands.
"It used to be much better," Rowland says.
The last time Sainz was here, just after Christmas, Rowland's locks brushed his back. He hadn't had a haircut in more than a year. "Your hair grows fast," Sainz says, spraying down the back of Rowland's head. He wets the top, then the sides, and tugs the widest-tooth comb along his temples. On the right side, the comb catches in the oxygen line. Sainz tries again. But Rowland's hair is so long, it's twisted around the tubes.
"Can you take those out for a few minutes?" Sainz asks, holding the tubes away from Rowland's face.
Rowland looks dubious but nods. "I'll try," he says, popping out the hoses.
"I'll work fast," Sainz promises.
He squirts mousse into his palm, rubs the sweet-smelling foam through Rowland's hair. Then he starts, methodically but quickly, separating sections, measuring them between his fingers, snipping away.
"You want me to do it the same way we did last time?" Sainz asks. He always asks.
As long as people can see, Sainz says, they'll have an idea about how they want their hair. Sometimes, when everything else has been stripped away - health and independence, dreams and mobility - hair is the only thing they have left to hold on to. And as long as people have the strength to see themselves in a mirror, they don't want to look like they're dying.
"Oh yeah," says Rowland. "Do it just like yours. Only whiter."
Move over, George Hamilton
Sainz is 52, but he looks much younger. He's wearing white sneakers, Levis, a pressed button-up shirt. Stylish wire-rim glasses frame his dark eyes. His skin is bronzed to a native Florida tan. His hair is deep brown, more like walnut, ample and wavy, slicked back at the sides.
He has three children from his first marriage, two grandkids and a fiance, Debbie Goldman, whom he'll wed in April. He used to drive a truck for a linen company, picking up laundry at hospitals and nursing homes. In 1974, he transitioned into hairdressing "for the air conditioning and the beautiful women."
Each week, Sainz cuts 65 heads at his Tampa salon. He started volunteering with the hospice in September, after a client told him they could use his help. He'd never thought about terminally ill people needing haircuts. But after helping a few people feel less frustrated and frightened about their appearance, he realized how important his small contribution could be.
"I already had a few shut-ins I'd do," he says. "Folks I'd done for years, who couldn't get out anymore." He's worked on patients at hospitals. He's been called to nursing homes and rehab centers and children's homes. "And my girlfriend runs an over-65 apartment complex, so I go over there and do some of those people, too. Most people are afraid to cut their own hair.
"And everyone deserves to have someone fussing over them for a few minutes."
Breathtaking
"Looking good. Looking good," Sainz tells Rowland, shaping his sideburns. He blow-dries the back, so it will fluff. "You ought to take your wife out dancing tonight, or something."
In his recliner, with his eyes closed, Rowland smiles. He wishes he could. He wishes so many things.
Sainz brushes back Rowland's hair and spritzes the tips. He unplugs his blow dryer. Plugs Rowland's oxygen tubes back in. Then he reaches into his satchel, to find the man a mirror.
"You look like a movie star," Sainz says, unsnapping the drape from around Rowland's neck.
Rowland stares into the little mirror. He seems stunned at the effect. Even the striped pajamas look snappier.
"That's me?" he asks, turning his wan face from side to side. "I do look good, don't I?"
Just then, Rowland's wife comes home from work. She brought Little Caesar's for lunch. She sees her husband over the pizza box, and her jaw drops.
"Oh, you look so much better!" she cries. She runs to the table to deposit the pizza. Then she runs to her husband and throws her arms around his neck.
"It's amazing how much of a difference a haircut can make," she says. She fans her fingers through his still-warm hair. She clasps his cheeks in her hands, being careful not to crush the oxygen lines. Then she kisses him, hard, on the lips.
Rowland may feel a bit better. But his wife says she got the greater gift. "You almost look like you again," she says.
Sainz shoulders his satchel. He bends down to shake Rowland's hand. "I hope to see you again."
Then the hairdresser heads back outside, to his Blazer. He has to make another house call this afternoon. An old woman out in Temple Terrace is waiting.
-- Lane DeGregory can be reached at 727 893-8825 or by e-mail to degregory@sptimes.com
For more information about LifePath Hospice, call 813 877-2200 or go to www.lifepath-hospice.org
