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“High and tight,” Richard Magnuson said as he eased into the makeshift barber chair in a back room at the Loveland Resource Center, his left foot in a walking boot.
“You got it,” said volunteer hairdresser Ginny Gischel as she snapped a yellow smock around his neck before sorting through her selection of clipper guards. “What do you want for a length on top? Do you want one on top? So zero up to a one. Is it ok if I trim your eyebrows too?”
As she switched on her clippers, Gischel asked Magnuson about his latest doctor’s appointment for his foot, which is getting better, he said. Then she tossed out the same question she’d asked every client who sat in her chair that morning: What’s your favorite Thanksgiving food?
Magnuson, who cooks his own holiday dinner, launched into his recipe for sweet potatoes with pineapple and marshmallows.
“You put it all together and mash it up, then add brown sugar,” he said, as Gischel’s clipper buzzed through his hair.
Magnuson’s high and tight was the final of roughly a dozen haircuts Gischel completed Tuesday during her latest twice-monthly visit to the center, where she has been offering free cuts and trims to people experiencing homelessness since 2023.
For many who come through the doors, her visits provide a rare moment of care, dignity and conversation at a time when Loveland’s homeless services have been under strain.
“I want them to feel just like they would if they were coming into my salon,” Gischel said afterwards. “It’s a special connection that we all share with our hairdresser. And I feel like human touch is so important, and I might be the only person that touches them in a month.”
‘I decided I was going to answer the call’
Hairstyling is a career Gischel seemed destined to follow from birth. Arriving on her grandmother Virginia’s birthday, not only would she be named Ginny in her honor, but would also follow her trailblazing footsteps into the beauty industry.
“My great-grandfather, her dad, gave her a loan in the 1940s, during World War II, to start her own beauty business, which was a rare thing for a woman then,” Gischel said.
Gischel, who was born and raised in Berthoud, remembers getting manicures from her grandmother at about age 6, before Alzheimer’s disease set in and led to her death a decade later, not long before Gischel left for the Aveda Institute in Florida.
January will mark 18 years as a professional stylist for Gischel, with stints in Italy and locations across Colorado before she settled near her hometown. She currently sees clients at True Colors Salon and Day Spa in west Loveland, and, outside of work, keeps busy raising three sons, ages 8, 15 and 19.
The opportunity to volunteer at the LRC came to Gischel at an inopportune moment. In June 2023, a former LRC counselor told her the center’s previous volunteer barber had recently died and finding a replacement had proved difficult. Though it was just weeks before her wedding, Gischel said it felt like she was being called to the job by a higher power.
“You don’t say ‘Sorry, God, I’m planning my wedding,’” she said. “So I decided I was going to answer the call.”
‘She’s a blessing’
LRC guests start signing up for an appointment with Gischel on the Friday before regular visits and, most times, the list fills quickly. By the time she arrives on Tuesday morning, she said she often feels like a kindergarten teacher greeting her class.
“Everybody says ‘Miss Ginny, Miss Ginny, I’m on your list today,’” she said with a chuckle. “The gratitude here is through the roof.”
A typical day at the LRC for Gischel starts around 9 a.m. and ends around 2 p.m., with as many as 22 haircuts in between, but more typically around 13 to 15.
“Mind you, it’s not like I’m doing a full service where I’m, like, shampooing and blow drying,” Gischel said. “It’s usually pretty quick.”
Gratitude for Gischel’s services and her company is real, especially for Edmon Lessley, who is working his way back to stability after alcohol addiction left him without permanent housing. Now employed, he said his regular sessions in her chair give him more confidence on the job.
“I got a haircut today and I’ll go to work on Thursday feeling professional and not feeling like a homeless bum with no hope,” he said. “She’s awesome. She’s a blessing.”
LRC’s Program Manager Dylin Cruz echoed those comments and said Gischel’s visits always seem to lighten the mood in the center, both before and after the cutting begins.
“She just greets each person with love,” Cruz said. “She treats them like she would in her salon, and they come out looking better than they walked in — even if it’s the same haircut they always get. They’re just happier to be with her.”
Gischel acknowledged that some LRC clients have their good and bad days — what she calls “quiet haircuts” — but said she has never felt unsafe while working at the center. What weighs on her more are the stories people often carry in with them.
Mindful of that, she tailors conversation carefully.
“They know I’m not there to fix their problems, I’m there to fix their hair,” Gischel said. “But it’s just the power of listening to somebody. Sometimes their problems are solvable on their own, and they just needed to hear things out loud.”
“This is where they feel safe’
The benefits definitely go both ways, Gischel continued.
“I’ve built these really amazing connections with these people,” she said. “And it’s just it’s really changed my whole perception on the homeless population. I definitely had predispositions of what I thought things were going to be like, and it’s definitely blown that out of the water.”
Among her misperceptions was the belief that addiction was the primary cause of homelessness. What she hears now, week after week, is a cross-section of lives knocked off course by illness, lost jobs, violent relationships, untreated mental health conditions or a single unlucky break.
She’s also learned that many of Loveland’s unhoused are tied to the area in ways that make it a painful choice to leave, even with the closure of the city’s overnight shelter on South Railroad Avenue.
“They grew up here and graduated high school here,” she said. “And even though they might not have people that can house them, they still have connections to children that are in school or elderly parents in nursing homes… This is what they know. This is where they feel safe.”
Her ability to relate to those she interacts with at the LRC, she said, comes partly from her own past struggles with alcohol abuse.
Gischel has been sober for seven years, and she said recovery taught her the importance of listening without judgement, which she makes a point of offering to everyone who sits in her chair.
“I know what a struggle addiction can be,” she said. “I think that is a huge part of my addiction recovery — that connection to others and showing them this is what a recovering alcoholic looks like — I’m happy and free and my life isn’t in a miserable place.”
Gischel said she’ll keep showing up every two weeks, as long as the center has space and an outlet for her clippers. She hopes another stylist might someday join her so the LRC can offer haircuts every week instead of twice a month. Someday, she said, she’d love a sink so clients could have their hair washed before a cut.
For now, she keeps the routine simple: show up, listen, make people feel cared for.
“I don’t have to be the judge, the jury or the executioner,” she said. “I can just show up and meet them where they’re at and love them where they’re at.”
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