Last summer, Katie Steller pulled off the freeway on her way to work in Minneapolis. She stopped at a traffic light, where a man was sitting with a sign asking for help. She rolled down her window and shouted. "Hey. I'm driving around giving free haircuts. Do you want one right now?" The man laughed, then paused. "Actually," he said, "I was really hoping to get a haircut." Steller pulled out a red chair from her car and helped the man cut his hair immediately. After the work was done, the man looked in a mirror. "I look good!" he said.
Up to now, Steller has given 30 or so such haircuts around the city to people with little influence, and she is strongly aware of the power of her cleanup job.
As a teen, she suffered from a severe disease, causing her hair to get thinned, so her mother arranged for Steller's first professional haircut. "To sit down and have somebody look at me and talk to me like a person and not just an illness, it helped me feel cared about and less alone," she says. After that, Steller knew she wanted to have her own barbershop so she could help people feel the way she'd felt that day. Not long after finishing cosmetology (美容术) school in 2009, she began what she now calls her Red Chair Project, reaching out to people on the streets. Her aim was that by doing some kind acts, others would be inspired to spread their own.
"Part of what broke my heart was just how lonely people looked," she said. "I thought maybe I'd go around and ask if people want free haircuts. I can't fix their problems, but maybe I can help them feel less alone for a moment."
It all began with a belief in simple acts of kindness, such as a free haircut. "The way you show up in the world matters," said Steller. "You have no idea what people are going to do with the kindness that you give them."
