Girl shaves head for fellow cancer patient

With her friends and teachers cheering her on, Gina Mulieri sat straight up as the electric buzzer gently touched the light, blond fuzz on her nearly bare scalp.

"I'm going to miss all this hair," joked the 11-year-old, who has been battling a brain tumor for the past five years. "I just went from being 95-percent bald to 100-percent bald."

Although too weak to attend her sixth-grade classes at Sequoya Middle School in Holtsville, Monday she joined dozens of students, parents and faculty on campus for the school's fourth annual head-shaving event to benefit the St. Baldrick's Foundation for childhood cancer research.

She was received at the event like a minor celebrity -- slapping hands and bumping fists with her classmates -- as Gina shaved what little hair she had for 7-year-old Matthew Abbatiello of Holtsville, another student in the Sachem school district fighting cancer.

Matthew, also bald from cancer treatment, watched the event from home with his mother over the Internet. Still recovering from a bone-marrow transplant, his immune system was too weak for him to be in public. He was on a large screen during the spirited event, which included a packed auditorium of cheering middle schoolers.

This year, the school community raised more than $28,000 in two weeks of fundraising for the foundation, said Doreen Schaefer, a speech pathologist at the school and one of the event organizers.

Matthew, a student at nearby Waverly Avenue Elementary, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia last July at the age of 6. He also tested positive for a rare chromosomal rearrangement called mixed lineage leukemia, which is resistant to chemotherapy. Last month, his 11-year-old sister, Nicole, donated bone marrow to him.

Gina was diagnosed five years ago with a malignant brain tumor called a medulloblastoma. She has relapsed twice and is currently on an experimental treatment with St. Judes Children's Research Hospital.

"It is very hard to be a kid with cancer," said Gina's mother, Bonnie Mulieri, 42, of Holbrook, as she captured the event on her cell phone, her eyes welling up with tears. "But they call her the mayor. She is always trying to be there for other kids when they're scared. . . . She didn't want him to go through this feeling alone."