After 6 decades cutting hair in Aurora, Alfredo Vialpando takes a seat in the chair

AURORA, Colo. — Like a pastor, Alfredo Vialpando has been garnering disciples for decades.

But the 82-year-old doesn’t preach from a pulpit. His pedestal is behind a barber’s chair, with scissors or clippers in hand, where he’s cut the hair of loyal customers for decades.

On Dec. 31 Vialpando finally walked away from his barbershop station for good, he says, putting an end to a 60-year career in Aurora. Customers and colleagues lamented the loss of an Aurora community staple, they said, an amiable salon master who kept his dexterity even as an octogenarian.

“I’m 82 years old. I figured my family wants me to stay home,” he said.

With his decision, a wayward flock of regulars will have to find a new barber. That includes Richard del’Etoil, 83, who says he met Vialpando in 1959.

Del’Etoil, then stationed on the old Lowry Air Force Base, said just four barbers were supposed to service 13,000 people stationed there. Instead of waiting around for a trim, he walked down the street to Vialpando’s shop.

Vialpando gave him a military-style “flat top”: closely cropped on the sides and flat as a table on top, he said, for about 60 cents.

“He got it all flat. No hair sticking up,” del’Etoile said.

So he kept returning to Vialpando.

The two formed a friendship lasting through the decades that survived Vialpando moving his shop throughout Aurora.

Born in Chama, in the San Luis Valley, in 1938, Vialpando moved to Aurora in the late 1950s.

Over the years, he became an expert in no shortage of haircut trends.

In 1964, when The Beatles played Red Rocks, Vialpando noticed that the popular hairstyles turned longer, and longer, and longer.

From his shop location in the 1970s near the intersection of Galena Street and East Colfax Ave., he began cutting unisex-style haircuts per the androgynous style of the hippy era.

In the 80s came the perms, so he became trained in using chemicals, and the fades and mohawks of the punks. He even did “liberty spikes” once, he said.

From behind the barber’s chair, Vialpando also saw Aurora boom from a town of less than 50,000 people to its current spot inches from the 400,000 mark.

Despite being at-risk for falling fatally ill with COVID-19, Vialpando didn't stop cutting hair throughout the pandemic. That meant del’Etoile never looked too scraggly, he said.

He didn’t escape all of 2020’s bad fortune, though.

Over the summer, Vialpando was involved in a car crash. Soon after, when trying to fix his sprinklers, he fell and broke his eyebrow on the pavement. Water from the sprinklers sprayed into his hearing aids.

“That was a close call,” he said.

His eyebrow healed up nicely, and his hearing issues haven’t held him back from cutting hair, he said. So he continued to work until the last day of 2020.

That day, he left his last workstation at Salon West, 15273 E. Smoky Hill Road. A hair stylist there, Sue Hettich, said Vialpando has no shortage of regulars. Customers in their sixties walk in and say “He’s been cutting my hair since I was two,” she said.

Del’Etoile said he’ll continue to see Vialpando, even if it won’t be at the barbershop.

“I’m going to miss it,” Vialpando said of his career behind the chair. “Right now, I just have to find something to do.”