A Crowning Achievement

Photograph by Hal Yeager, The Birmingham News

When 12-year-old Chelsea Karpowicz of Alexander City, Ala., comes home from school, she doesn’t kick back and turn on the TV, or go out to play, or even start her homework. She counts hats — dozens and dozens of hats.

In December, Chelsea, shown here, started Hats Off To Chemo, to collect baseball caps and other hats for patients undergoing cancer treatment.

She came up with the idea after watching a television show produced by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in Memphis. The program showed children who lost their hair because of chemotherapy. “I felt a desire and a need to help — whether physically, mentally, or emotionally,” Chelsea says. “That night I put myself in their shoes and thought of what I would want and decided: hats.”

So far, Chelsea has collected more than 25,000 hats. The contributors include people and organizations of all kinds, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Late Show with David Letterman, the National Football League, and Jim Davis, creator of the Garfield cartoon character. Some of the hats are autographed by famous people — including St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire and members of Congress.

The idea began as a local effort mostly for kids, but hats have poured in to Alexander City Middle School — the drop-off location — from all over the country, and the project now also gives hats to adults.

Every day since the spring — when a delivery driver noticed the project — the United Parcel Service has come to Chelsea’s house to pick up the boxes of hats, which they ship at no charge.

Chelsea, who wants to be an oncologist when she grows up, says her favorite part of the project is visiting kids in the hospitals. “At first, they held their heads down low,” she says, “but once they get the hats and put them on, it’s like a magic hat, and it changes their moods all around and they’re just happy and smiling.”