Gilberts girl, 5, donates her locks to children suffering from hair loss

A little girl from Gilberts grew her hair for nearly a year to donate 9 inches to children suffering from hair loss, and now says she wants to do it again.

“I wanted to make other girls and boys who didn't have hair, have hair,” said Claire Alice, 5, who donated to the nonprofit Children With Hair Loss. “It felt good.”

Claire got her hair cut Thursday evening by her neighbor, Rosaria Zambetti, a stylist at L'Auberge A. Golden Day Spa & Salon in Barrington.

While admiring her new bob, Claire told her mother she wants to keep donating hair until she's 100. The next day, she had scaled that back to doing it until she's 12.

Melissa Alice said it was all her daughter's idea. Claire told her in early January that she'd seen a YouTube video about hair donation.

Children With Hair Loss requires a minimum donation of 8 inches, and getting it to that length meant battling tangled hair.

“I told her, ‘If you want, we can stop. You don't have to continue to try to donate.' But she was very steadfast, she really wanted to donate,” Melissa Alice said. “She's a very driven little girl. When she gets an idea in her head, where it's picking what socks she will wear or anything else ... she follows through.”

Claire, who turns 6 in May and attends kindergarten at Gilberts Elementary School, said she has an easy remedy to tangled hair. “I let my dad brush it.”