Salon raises money for cancer

Chicago Street Hair Co. is usually dark and quiet on Sundays, tucked into a small plaza in the 1400 block of Algonquin Road. On Oct. 24, though, music blared out of its open door as people came in for reduced price haircuts in a cutathon fundraiser for Allexis Fetzer, a 13-year-old Algonquin Middle School student recently diagnosed with cancer.

After a year of tests and a nagging pain in her neck, Fetzer and her family found out in June she has papillary thyroid carcinoma, a cancer that attacks the thyroid gland.

Though it is a slow-growing type of cancer and easy to treat, Fetzer's is very advanced, according to her mom, Nicole Lampasano, and will likely recur throughout Fetzer's life.

Lampasano has fallen behind on household bills since the beginning of her daughter's illness and though medical bills have been paid by Fetzer's father, the cutathon proceeds will go toward helping Lampasano catch up.

Paige Butler, the receptionist at Chicago Street Hair Co. worked with her mother, Kathy, to organize the cutathon. They are related by marriage to Fetzer.

The salon has held cutathons in the past to raise money for other cancer patients, so the owner, Kathy Piske, agreed to open her doors for Fetzer's family.

“The goal was to get as many cuts in and raise as much money as we could,” Butler said. “We were thinking maybe $1,200 so it exceeded our expectations.”

The event ran from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. when eight stylists, donating their time and expertise, did about 50 haircuts. The cuts cost $20, a little cheaper than the average at Chicago Street Hair Co, but many people donated more than that, according to stylist Olivia Vazzano.

Vazzano said even people who have relatives who cut hair made an exception and came to the salon Sunday.

“It was heartwarming just to be a part of it,” Vazzano said.

The Beta Club, a community service group for seventh- and eighth-graders at Algonquin Middle School volunteered as well, sweeping hair and painting nails turquoise the color for thyroid cancer to raise extra funds.

Fetzer has had three surgeries since June to remove the cancer, but there are still pieces left in her lungs, sternum and armpit. She will begin an iodine treatment in the next couple weeks and will have to take medicine and get regular scans for the rest of her life.

As her body adjusts to the medicine, Fetzer will likely be tired sometimes and need to take it easy, but her mom said she'll mostly be like a normal teenager. She'll go back to school the first week of November, saying goodbye to a tutor she has seen several times per week this entire academic year.

Fetzer said she is excited to get back to school and is not nervous for the next stage in her treatment.

“I'm kind of used to it now,” Fetzer said. “At first it was a little scary.”