Living her dream: Stylist becomes salon owner overnight
“My mom cut our hair by the full moon,” Liz Vigil said, recalling the childhood memory. She and her sisters would take baths, she said, “and we’d comb our hair really straight. Then my mom would take the dustpan and use that edge as the scissor line, and our hair would fall into the dustpan. We were three sisters with long, dark, straight hair.”
Maybe it was destiny that led Vigil to become a hair stylist. And maybe it was happenstance that allowed her to own her own business. But mostly, she says, looking back at her life, it was the unwavering strands of a mother’s love that gave her the courage to pursue a dream.
Her mother, Peñasco native Kathy Lopez, encouraged Vigil to go to beauty school. “But I was a basketball player. ‘I’m from the mountains,’ I thought. Now I tell kids, ‘Just listen to your moms.’ ”
Today, Vigil is the owner of Liz’s Santa Fe Hair Studio, which replaced Santa Fe Hair Studio in the DeVargas Center earlier this year.
“Oh my God,” she said. “It feels like a dream.”
Small businesses start that way — with hope and guts and, yes, dreams. Vigil’s got plenty of all three, but her story is still an unlikely one.
After all, it was not that long ago when she was out of a job — fired after butting heads with a new manager at the salon at JCPenney.
“That was in June 2014 — Friday the 13th, no less,” she recalled. Undaunted, Vigil called a friend from cosmetology school, Jennifer Valencia, who had her own salon in the DeVargas Center.
“I said, ‘Jen, I want my chair. I’m ready.’ She called me back and said she had clients. I said, ‘I’ll be there.’ ” The following Monday she had her chair, by the front window, at Santa Fe Hair Studio.
“I spread my wings,” she said. “When one of the other girls left for maternity leave, I became manager. I did the inventory, made sure we had what we needed. I did the interviews for the new stylists. Jennifer paid the paychecks.”
A month after Vigil started working in her salon, Valencia left for California on what was thought to be a vacation, but she didn’t come back; instead, she managed the salon remotely, relying heavily on Vigil and the other stylists to handle daily operations and everything it
takes to run a small salon.
“She came back about every two to six months,” Vigil said.
Valencia’s visit in January seemed like any other — until she announced she was closing the shop that day.
“I was shocked,” Vigil said. “‘What about us?’ I asked her. ‘What about the customers?’
“Jennifer told me, ‘Tomorrow, I’m going to start canceling appointments.’ ”
Vigil started thinking about her family — she and her husband, Simon Vigil, have two kids — Lylie, 13, and Simon, 7. “I have a paycheck-to-paycheck life,” she said. “If I don’t have work for next week, how am I going to buy dinner?”
So she asked Valencia right then and there if she could buy her equipment — not the business, just the contents of the space.
Valencia said OK. No lawyers. No written contract. One person putting on the brakes and another setting wheels in motion. Vigil hoped for a seamless transition, but never dreamed it would go as smoothly as it has.
Driving home that night, Vigil’s thoughts were racing. She told Simon what she’d done — she hadn’t even had time to consult him.
“I asked him, ‘What are you thinking?’ ” she said. “He said, ‘Of course you’re going to do it.’ That’s when fear turned to drive.”
Within days, Vigil signed the DeVargas Center lease, purchased business insurance, got a loan to pay Valencia for the contents of the salon, minus the phone number. She ordered new business cards, opened a business account, ordered business checks, got a fire inspection — everything she needed to open her own salon.
Attempts to reach Valencia by email and phone failed; even her voicemail message box was filled.
If it seems a tad unreal, well, it’s not because Vigil lacked for drive.
A month after her graduation from Peñasco High School, Vigil enrolled in Vogue College of Cosmetology in Santa Fe. During that time, she met Simon, a plumber and jack-ofall-trades. Less than a year later, she had her certificate and soon after started working as a stylist at the 15-chair salon in JCPenney at the Santa Fe Place mall.
There she met Rob Corabi, a self-described high-maintenance perfectionist. He loved the way Vigil cut his hair.
Corabi has been getting his hair washed and cut by Vigil for 11 years. He drives up from Albuquerque, where he lives and works as an accountant. “She’s vibrant and gives total attention to her customers,” he said. “I met her at Penney’s. If I moved anywhere, I’d come back to get my haircut by Liz, without a doubt.”
Vigil said she loves cutting hair and sharing stories. “That’s the way being a hairdresser is,” Vigil said. “I know about my clients’ lives. I sit with them for 30 minutes. We talk. For me, blow drying is like therapy.
“I go home happy. I don’t socialize much because I feel like I’ve been with my friends all day long.”
Vigil gives haircuts to some of the mall’s security guards and some of the other shopkeepers. Her clients range from elderly to babies, from wealthy to homeless, and everything in between.
“I’ve done first haircuts and last haircuts,” she said. “I’ve gone to clients’ funerals. You grow attached to them.”
But if you come to see Vigil to get your hair cut, colored or styled, don’t be offended if she can’t remember your name. “I’ll know your hair color, your formula, your haircut … before I know your name,” she said.
Her clients and family say they’ve never seen Vigil happier.
“When God is in the driver’s seat,” Vigil said, “it’s the best ride, ever.”