Last summer, Katie Steller pulled off the freeway on her way to work. She stopped at a traffic light, where a man was sitting with a sign asking for help. She rolled down her window and shouted, "I'm driving around giving free haircuts. Do you want one right now?" The man looked to be in his 60s. He was heavyset, balding, and missing a few teeth. He laughed, then paused. "Actually," he said, "I have a funeral to go. I was really hoping to get a haircut."
Few minutes later, the man, named Edward, took a seat on a red chair moved down from Steller's car, and she trimmed his curly graying hair. He told her about growing up in Mississippi, about moving to Minnesota to be closer to his children, and how he still often phoned his mom. After Steller was done, Edward looked in a mirror. "Wow, I look good!" he grinned.
To date, Steller has given 30 or so such haircuts to people around the city. She is keenly aware of the power of her cleanup job. "It's more than a haircut," she says.
Steller knows that a haircut can change a life. One changed hers. As a teen, she suffered from a severe bowel disease and her hair thinned drastically. Seeing this, 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 salon. Soon after finishing cosmetology（美容）school in 2009, she began what she now calls her Red Chair Project, reaching out to people on the streets.
"Part of what broke my heart was just how lonely people looked," she says. "I thought maybe I can't fix their problems, but I can help them feel less alone sometimes."
