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BOROBEAT: Fight breast cancer — in style

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See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.

By Will Bredderman

Brooklyn Daily

Don’t just look good — do good!

That’s what customers at Bay Ridge’s Pilo Arts Day Spa & Salon on Third Avenue between 84th and 85th streets have been at all October, by getting pink hair extensions in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

In August, Clear Channel Communications asked Pilo’s Director of Operations, Vicky Galiatsatos, to join radio station Z100’s fund-raising effort to fight the condition that afflicts more than 200 thousand American women each year. Galiatsatos said her team was all for it, especially since one employee was a breast cancer survivor. So, they found a creative way to contribute to the cause.

“We had the idea of pink extensions,” said Galiatsatos, adding that the $15 cost of the add-on strands goes to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. “We wanted to do something that would bring awareness about breast cancer, because a lot of people don’t get checked out soon enough.”

Soon, Bethany Watson, Loren Raye, and Danielle Monaro from the station’s “Elvis Duran and the Morning” show came by to get the rosy threads woven into their hair.

“They went drastic,” said Galiatsatos, noting that the girls laced hundreds of extensions into their hairdos — and that one even dyed her whole mop the signature color of breast cancer awareness. “It’s great, because people will say to them, ‘Hey, what’s that in your hair,’ and the word will get out.”

Soon, the station started broadcasting the news about Pilo taking up the fight — and clients started pouring in from as far as the radio waves could reach.

“We’ve had people coming here from the city, from Long Island, Jersey, the Bronx, Connecticut,” said Pilo’s Jude LaBarca. “It’s amazing to see the conviction of the women who have traveled such distance, and paid the gas and the tolls just to get one $15 piece in their hair. It’s incredibly humbling.”

Owner Elena Solitario, whose brother and sister are both cancer survivors, said she hoped the campaign would help erase any stigma associated with having cancer.

“You don’t have to be ashamed to have cancer. Years ago, you were afraid to go to a doctor, or to know someone who had cancer,” Solitario said. “We wanted to raise awareness that you need to go to a doctor and get it taken care of before it’s too late.”

Pink hair extension fund-raiser at Pilo Arts Day Spa & Salon [8412 Third Ave. between 84th and 85th streets in Bay Ridge, (718) 748–7411, piloarts.com]. Ends Oct. 31.

Reach reporter Will Bredderman at (718) 260–4507 or e-mail him at wbredderman@cnglocal.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/WillBredderman

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