By Mike Hazlip—
Victoria Wolfe learned how to cut hair at 14, and now the 64-year-old is passing along her hard-won wisdom on to the next generation of cosmetologists.
As the owner of Grand Oaks Salon for more than two decades, Wolfe has seen many customers come and go, but some are still around. The salon itself is a fixture in Citrus Heights having first opened its doors more than 70 years ago, Wolfe says.
“It started out as a little hole in the wall,” she said. “In fact, where my old shop is used to be a little mall right down the center. The Grand Oaks Beauty Salon was behind the shopping center, and there was also a barber shop back there.”
Wolfe said she took over the salon in 1998 to become the fifth owner of the business. She moved it from the Grand Oaks Shopping Center about eight years ago to a smaller space at the corner of Auburn Boulevard and Pratt Avenue to reduce the rent. She kept the name and phone number that has been in use since the salon opened.
Grand Oaks Beauty Salon made it to a “Top 20” list of the oldest, still-operating businesses in Citrus Heights, published by the city in 2017. The city recorded an opening date of 1960 for the salon, with Harris Industrial Gasses being the oldest business, opening in 1936.
Related: Here’s the ‘Top 20’ oldest businesses in Citrus Heights
Although styles have changed over the decades, Wolfe still specializes in styling hair just the way her customers want.
“We’re old-time hair styles,” she said. “We do the old styles, roller sets, old blow dries, the little old ladies — we do those.”
Some of her regulars have been coming to Wolfe for decades. Now the mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother is semi-retired and working only three days each week. She still makes time for some of her regulars, and struggled to keep the business open during the pandemic shutdown.
“It’s a family tradition,” she said. “We’ve been out here for so long, I’ve watched people come and go. I didn’t want COVID to shut me down.”
Wolfe said she used her own savings account to keep the business open during the shutdown. Now that the business has re-opened, Wolfe says some elderly customers are still apprehensive about venturing out for fear of of contracting the virus.
Her stylists continued to pay their rent for a chair at the salon, but when the landlord forgave the rent for a few months during mandated shutdowns, Wolfe said she returned the money back to her stylists.
Now, she says watching her stylists become successful is one of her main goals. She tries to pay it forward and pass on what she has learned to the next generation.
“I’d rather keep them busy,” she says. “I’ll push off a new person to [my stylists] unless they come in and ask for me, then I will do them, but I will try to keep my other girls busy.”
One of the next generation of stylists just might be Wolfe’s five-year-old granddaughter who already enjoys playing with makeup.
“I hope they do it, because they told me 48 years ago the back-combing, the little old lady hair styles were going to go out– we’re not going to be doing those any more. 48 years, I’m still doing them,” she said.
Wolfe learned to style hair in a trade school program at her high school, something she says there needs to be more of in today’s schools. She says many of the students at her high school were troublemakers, incentivizing her to gain skills and graduate as soon as possible
“I didn’t want to stick around in the school, so I checked out ROP with cosmetology,” Wolfe said, adding that administrators allowed her to participate in the program even though she was only a sophomore. “I said well, this is what I want to do, 48 years later, I’m still doing it.”
She graduated high school, attained her driver’s license, married, and had a baby, all at the age of 16 in 1974.
“When somebody told me I can’t do something, watch me,” she said.
When asked what advice she would give to those in high school today, she said determination is a key ingredient for success.
“Whatever field you go into, you stick with it,” she said. “Because it’s not going to come overnight. You’re not going to make the money over night like they tell you. It takes determination and years of doing something to get where you want to get.”
She recalled a girl who was born with missing fingers on both hands who wanted to be a cosmetologist when she was little. Years later, the girl came to Wolfe for a job and they worked side by side.
“It can happen if you’re determined to do something,” she said. “If you don’t have determination to do something, what are you going to do with your life?”
That determination seems to have worked for Wolfe, along with a little faith. She says she was raised as a Christian and credits her faith for getting her through.
“That’s the only way I’ve been able to do it all these years,” she said. “Put one foot in front of the other and keep on going. God’s pushing me in that direction I guess. He hasn’t let me fall yet. He listens to me wherever I am and I thank Him every day for what I have.”
