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De La Salle Students Donate to 'Locks of Love'

By Casey Cora | November 13, 2014 2:06pm
 Students at De La Salle's Lourdes Campus received drastic haircuts and donated the hair to Locks of Love. 
De La Salle Locks for Love
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BRIDGEPORT — The De La Salle students sat on folding chairs on the school stage, nervously waiting for their turn under the shears. 

Some laughed. Others, well, not so much.

"I cried a little when they cut my hair," said Corina Perez, 17, of Garfield Ridge, one of 13 students who participated in the school's annual charity event benefit for Locks of Love, a nonprofit that supplies real hair for wigs to kids diagnosed with serious illness. 

Justin Costello-Stebelton is an English teacher who's helped organize the drive each year. He said it's always been surprisingly easy to convince the teenage girls to part with their ponytails. 

"It might sound silly but I think it's the school. The girls are already inclined to donate ... it doesn't take much convincing," he said. 

But that doesn't mean they were immediately pleased with the drastic haircuts, delivered by stylists from Bridgeport's Modern Wave Salon and Spa and at least one school parent. 

After a stylist held up a length of her freshly shorn hair — eliciting howls from the student body — 17-year-old Maria Toxtoe retreated to a seat near the back of the stage. 

"I feel horrible that it's is so short," she said.

But there was a saving grace: The girls were treated to free stylings after the drastic cuts.

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