• September 13, 1999
• Vol. 52
• No. 10

Off the Top

Showing Support, and Their Scalps, for a Fellow Officer's Son in Chemotherapy, 70 Colorado Cops Dare to Be Bare

It was bad enough that his 18-year-old son Brian suffers from a rare form of muscle cancer. But one day recently Jim Kautz looked at Brian as he was finishing a chemotherapy session and noticed the clumps of his son's hair that had just fallen out. There was something about this added indignity that really hit home. "It made me so sad, so sad," says Jim, 50, a detective and 26-year veteran of the Westminster (Colo.) police department. "The next day I didn't get much done at work because I was thinking about it." Rather than tear his own hair out in frustration, though, Jim decided to do something better. He marched down to the local barbershop and had it all shaved off in solidarity with Brian.

Before anyone knew it, he wasn't the only one flashing a pate as shiny as his badge. As word of what Jim had done got around the Westminster station house, other officers volunteered to follow suit. On Aug. 25, 65 of the 142 male officers in the department gathered in their muster room to have their heads shaved. (Five other cops did their own trims.) They were joined by 10 local firefighters, a Denver policeman and even one female records clerk.

"Most of the guys around here have known Brian since he was a baby," explains Officer Steve Peterson, one of those who lost his locks for the cause. The show of support overwhelmed Brian, not to mention his mother, DeeDee, 43, a nurse, his father and his sister Brena, 16. "It's a neat thing for all these guys to do something like this for me," says Brian. "It makes it easier for me to walk around without my hat on."

Said his choked-up father, thanking those who participated in the event known as the Great Shave-Off: "I see a lot of ugly heads out there, but a lot of beautiful people."