Ambiance Salon in Hewlett teams up with Mondays at Racine Cancer Care Foundation

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For Ali Artz it was a staff member who died of pancreatic cancer and for Karla Waldron it is a way for her family to honor the mother they lost to breast cancer.

Artz, the new owner of the Ambiance Salon in Hewlett, has teamed up with the Mondays at Racine Cancer Care Foundation to offer Mondays at Racine, where several services are offered for free every third Monday to women and men undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatments for cancer. Ambiance has been in Hewlett for roughly 31 years. Artz took over the business at 1344 Broadway last October. She re-launched the business.

“We had a stylist on staff, I worked with her for years and she lost her battle with pancreatic cancer in 2015,” Artz said, remembering Philomena Lucignano-Phylllis. “I wanted to really get involved, my husband (Larry Artz) is a radiation therapist to cancer patients for 19 years and I was introduced to Karla. It was what I needed to be involved in to help make people’s journey a little lighter.”

Waldron’s two siblings — Rachel DeMolfetto and Cynthia Sansone — established Mondays at Racine in 2003 out of the Islip salon of the same name. “It started as a homage to our mother who passed away in the ’80s of breast cancer,” said Waldron, executive director of the foundation. “Then there were no resources, no pink ties in the mid-80s. She was a professional woman in real estate, a mother of six but quite coiffed. When her hair started falling out no one knew how to help. [The salons] treated her like a leper.” Mildred DeMolfetto died in 1989.

That is not the case on Mondays at Racine. Clients can receive a gentle head shaving, massage therapy, non-toxic hair dye and manicures, organic facials and skin care, re-growth haircuts, therapeutic pedicures, wig care and wig styling. Clients are referred through hospitals and treatment centers.

“We want to let the community know we are there for them and support them as they are going through this journey,” Artz said, adding that cosmetologists are by design people who can “provide a kind word” and her staff is an experienced one. “You really are a listener,” she said, “this is the backbone of our business.”

HBO filmed a documentary “Mondays at Racine” in 2013 that was released a year later. The Academy Award-nominated short documentary prompted the foundation to register as a legal nonprofit as donations poured in. “It was coming in from all over the place,” Waldron said. “But most important we were getting a lot of calls from all over the world on how they could do the program. Waldron said that since 2014, Mondays at Racine has served more than 9,000 people on Long Island. There are 15 Suffolk programs and in Nassau, Hewlett, Levittown and Point Lookout.

On Monday, Ambiance hosted a ribbon-cutting in the afternoon and a launch for Mondays at Racine at night. “Mondays at Racine” was shown. “I’m really excited,” Artz said. Hewlett House, the home of the 1 in 9: The Long Island Breast Cancer Action Coalition sent a representative.

“What we are is a refuge,” Waldron said. “Women applying lipstick feel taller. I call it the ‘mushroom effect.’ They are a little bit lighter and it’s a better family situation.”

On Monday, Oct. 28, the foundation’s fifth annual Long Island Beauty Ball will be held at the Crest Hollow Country Club. Waldron said nearly 800 people attend and it is a nontraditional fun night. Tickets at https://www.mondaysatracine.org/libb/.