Milwaukee Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva started going bald when he was 10. He soon learned he had alopecia areata, an auto-immune skin disease, and by age 12, had no hair or eyebrows. It was tough, he recalls. “I didn’t know anyone who had it. I didn’t accept it.”
The unhappy youth found solace on the basketball court, where Michael Jordan and other stars made bald beautiful. Tall and talented, Villanueva dominated in high school and college, and fans tried to disrupt him with vicious insults. “They couldn’t make fun of my game, so they would get on the way I look,” Villanueva says.
Today, he helps others with the disease, which affects nearly 2 percent of the population, around 5 million Americans, and has no known cure. As a University of Connecticut sophomore, he attended a National Alopecia Areata Foundation conference and found children flocked to him as a role model. He became the nonprofit’s spokesman and, as an NBA star, started the Charlie’s Angels Meet & Greet program to meet kids with alopecia before road games. Now in his third pro season (and second with Milwaukee), Villanueva has held more than 30 meet-and-greets across North America, winning the NBA’s Community Assist Award in February 2006.
“I really emphasize that they have alopecia; alopecia doesn’t have them,” Villanueva says. “It’s important you control the situation, versus the situation controlling you. Stay positive and find the tool to overcome the difficulty.”
Five-year-old Kiah Lang met with Villanueva before a game last spring. A kindergartner at the Milwaukee Spanish Immersion School, she lost her hair at age 4, and wears a hat to school to cover her bald head.
Kiah still talks about the meeting, her dad Josh Lang says, and even watches for Villanueva when the Bucks are on TV, trying in vain to say his full name. The meet-and-greet was also the first time she met other children with alopecia, which helped her realize she wasn’t alone. When her older sister told Kiah her hair was starting to grow back, her Dad recalls, Kiah’s response was clear. “No it’s not, and it’s never going to,” she explained. “We’re just going to have to learn to deal with it.”
