Crime “Wave” in West Dallas Beauty Shop

Saturday, June 6, was turning into an average day at Zelma’s Beauty Salon on Singleton Boulevard. Zelma’s is like a community center for many of the women of West Dallas. If they don’t have a hair appointment, they’ll still come and sit on the yellow vinyl chairs and talk or watch television. In fact, a few of the women who noticed a young man walk in at about 11:45 a.m. would later say that he looked just like the character Jessie Hubbard of the soap opera, “All My Children.”

The young man asked Zelma Joiner, who has run the beauty shop for thirty years, if he could get a curl. Curls cost $40 and are the piece de resistance of Zel-ma’s salon. (She also does perms for $23 and waves for $17.) But something very odd happened after the handsome fellow completed his shampoo and then had the pre-softener applied to his hair, According to Zelma’s daughter. Deborah, who also works at the salon, “he stood up and yelled, ’This is a holdup and I ain’t playing.’ “

“I was holding some curlers,” says Zelma. fifty-four, “and I said. ’Oh, Lord, but what about his curl?’ Then he started waving a pistol at me and I threw my curlers down and said. ’Yes, sir, whatever you want.’ “

A lot of strange places get burglarized these days-on the same weekend that Zelma’s salon was hit. a man tried to steal a toilet from a Dallas bowling alley-but rarely does someone hold up the same place where he has come to get his hair done, It’s so hard to find a good hair stylist these days that one normally goes to great lengths to develop a good relationship. But Zelma, who got her beauty training from Madame C.J. Walker’s Beauty School, realized quickly that this man would not become one of her steady customers. She considered offering him a discount on the $40 curl. Instead, he asked everyone to deliver all their cash and jewelry to him, which he then put in a green garbage bag.

“One of our beauty operators, Margaret,” says Deborah, “started praying out loud. She said, “Dear Lord, have mercy on us all.’ The man shouted. ’Shut up, woman.’ Margaret started screaming. It wasn’t one of her good prayers.”

There were twenty-five people in the salon, along with the four operators. The beauty bandit got more than $2,000 in cash and an estimated S5.000 in jewelry. Meanwhile, Deborah inched over to the burglar alarm and pulled it.

“When he heard it ringing,” says Deborah, “he said, ’What’s that? A siren?’ He wasn’t a real brilliant man.” The uncurled criminal, however, was smart enough to run out the door. Deborah came right after him with a gun she keeps in the shop (“He had violated our beauty shop, and that’s the truth”). At the door, she handed the pistol to a man who had also been robbed. The man rushed out to fire some shots at the beauty bandit, who promptly returned fire and fled.

Police have not made an arrest and have few leads. “They asked me what his hair would look like after it was curled.” says Zelma. “I don’t know how that could have helped.”

Zelma pauses. “I wonder if that man knew how good we could have made him look.”