Skin Care Heroine
Esthetician turns rough upbringing into spirit of generosity
By Rebecca Jones
Originally published in Skin Deep, November/December 2009. Copyright 2009. Associated Skin Care Professionals. All right reserved.
She grew up on the mean streets of East Los Angeles, one of four kids, with a single mom struggling to support her family. They were on welfare. They had almost nothing, and what little they did have was usually secondhand or broken-down.
Very little of Christine Fleming's early life suggested she would one day end up with her own esthetics practice and a home on the golf course, a regular on the Palm Springs social circuit, and totally at ease amid the opulence and luxury all around her.
But then, Fleming's life has never unfolded in expected ways. Not when she talked her way into a job as sales director of a staffing agency in Newport Beach, California. Not when she left and launched her own staffing agency, eventually employing 500 people. Not when she got fed up with corporate life and decided to sell cosmetics instead. Not when she finally took the plunge and went to cosmetology school, even though she was past her 40th birthday.
"I never went by the book," Fleming says. "I've always gone around obstacles to get where I wanted to go."
Charitable Events
Today, Fleming spends about four days a week working with clients, primarily at a studio in a dental building, yet much of her time is devoted to promoting charitable events. She supports two to four charities every month, providing them with gift certificates for skin care products, and gives away about $1,500 a month in free skin care treatments.
In March, she staged her own event, a first for her. It was an "All About Skin Care" fund-raiser for Gilda's Club, a respite for people whose lives have been touched by cancer.
A year earlier, Fleming had lost her best friend to cancer, and she felt compelled to do something in her honor.
Now she's planning her next big fund-raiser, a metaphysical fair, The Power of Positive Energy, slated for November 14 at the Riviera Resort Hotel & Spa in Palm Springs. The beneficiary is a charity Fleming hopes many estheticians will hear about and come to support: Iraq Star.
"It's for the men and women in service who come home from Iraq and feel like monsters because their faces are covered with burn marks or disfigurements," Fleming says. The military will replace missing hands and legs, but it doesn't pay for cosmetic surgery to restore the appearance of vets whose injuries left unsightly scars.
Disfigured Soldiers
Maggie Lockridge, an acquaintance of Fleming's and a nurse specializing in the care of plastic surgery patients launched Iraq Star two years ago. She's also a veteran of the Air Force Nurse Corps.
"Once you're in the military, you don't lose that element of patriotism," says Lockridge, who spent 18 years caring for postoperative plastic surgery patients, during which time she befriended many of the best plastic surgeons in Los Angeles. "I saw all the disfigurements these young soldiers came home with, and it bothered me terribly that these could be my grandkids. I wanted to do something for them."
Fleming says she's hoping to raise between $3,000-5,000 for Iraq Star with the metaphysical fair, which will include lunch, speakers on meditation and psychic phenomena, vendor booths, and prizes that include donated cosmetics, resort weekends, robes, and spa services.
All fairgoers will receive copies of Fleming's new book, More Than Your Eyes Can See, a self-published account of her experiences with extrasensory perception, a gift she says has both intrigued and terrified her since she was a small child.
"I tried to stay away from that for many years," Fleming says. She began to reconnect with the metaphysical after she left the corporate world. "I had always looked on it as a negative thing because I didn't want to feel or know too many things about people. But I want to bring more of my inner self back into my life now."
Spiritual Pursuits
It was her reconnection with the spiritual side of life that drew Fleming into being more intentional about involving herself in charitable work. Although she's been a licensed esthetician only a short time, Fleming's love of skin care goes back to her youth.
"Ever since I was a teenager, I would wrap my friends up in white towels, have them lie down, and give them facials," she says. "All my life I've been interested in skin care. It's all about making people feel good. I love to see people smile, to see and hear their happiness."
Fleming's financially deprived childhood was hard, but one thing she was never short on was love, she says. "My family has always been very loving and giving. We didn't have anything. All we had were hand-me-downs. But we were different from a lot of the families around us. We had plenty of love. I still call my mother every day, and I'm very close to my sisters and brother."
A Career Path
"I never looked for jobs in newspaper classifieds," she says. "If I was interested in something, I would just go for it." That's what happened when she first applied for work at a staffing service. Fleming was confident in her ability to make a good first impression and to talk her way into just about anything.
"People thought I was well educated," she says. "But I always just knew what to say." Fleming won that job and ended up tripling their business.
Change of Plans
Later, she left that company and launched her own staffing agency, a very successful enterprise until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Her company was hit hard. Then, a close employee left, taking Fleming's best client in the process. Demoralized, she closed her business. She wasn't sure where to channel her energy and soon returned to her former interest in skin care.
Needing further education, she studied to become an esthetician and supplemented those studies with reiki, a healing technique that involves channeling energy through touch to restore well-being.
She and her husband moved to the desert, a spot she's found more conducive to her metaphysical interests than northern California.
"There's this energy here," she says of the Palm Springs area. "I love the sun and waking up to a blue sky. There's energy with the people here, too. Everywhere you go you meet people who are in a good mood, and everyone is happy. It's the energy here, the heat, the brightness of the sky, and the people. Something about the metaphysical side of my life is coming out now. I can feel it. There's something out there in store for me. I don't know what it is, but it's a wonderful feeling."
Networks and Notes
Fleming opened her esthetics practice a year ago and built it quickly. She is a natural at marketing, and found that the more organizations she joined, the more people she could connect with and the more clients she produced.
"Everyone I meet, I make contact with later," she says. "I send them notes saying it was nice to meet them. If I see someone sitting alone at a luncheon, I grab them and make them feel comfortable. I talk with everyone."
Fleming feels she's been able to find just the right balance in her life. "I love what I do," she says. "I wouldn't change anything. It's all about working with my hands. Energy, reiki, skin care--it all works together."
Rebecca Jones is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer based in Denver, Colorado. Contact her at killarneyrose@comcast.net.
She grew up on the mean streets of East Los Angeles, one of four kids, with a single mom struggling to support her family. They were on welfare. They had almost nothing, and what little they did have was usually secondhand or broken-down.
Very little of Christine Fleming's early life suggested she would one day end up with her own esthetics practice and a home on the golf course, a regular on the Palm Springs social circuit, and totally at ease amid the opulence and luxury all around her.
But then, Fleming's life has never unfolded in expected ways. Not when she talked her way into a job as sales director of a staffing agency in Newport Beach, California. Not when she left and launched her own staffing agency, eventually employing 500 people. Not when she got fed up with corporate life and decided to sell cosmetics instead. Not when she finally took the plunge and went to cosmetology school, even though she was past her 40th birthday.
"I never went by the book," Fleming says. "I've always gone around obstacles to get where I wanted to go."
Charitable Events
Today, Fleming spends about four days a week working with clients, primarily at a studio in a dental building, yet much of her time is devoted to promoting charitable events. She supports two to four charities every month, providing them with gift certificates for skin care products, and gives away about $1,500 a month in free skin care treatments.
In March, she staged her own event, a first for her. It was an "All About Skin Care" fund-raiser for Gilda's Club, a respite for people whose lives have been touched by cancer.
A year earlier, Fleming had lost her best friend to cancer, and she felt compelled to do something in her honor.
Now she's planning her next big fund-raiser, a metaphysical fair, The Power of Positive Energy, slated for November 14 at the Riviera Resort Hotel & Spa in Palm Springs. The beneficiary is a charity Fleming hopes many estheticians will hear about and come to support: Iraq Star.
"It's for the men and women in service who come home from Iraq and feel like monsters because their faces are covered with burn marks or disfigurements," Fleming says. The military will replace missing hands and legs, but it doesn't pay for cosmetic surgery to restore the appearance of vets whose injuries left unsightly scars.
Disfigured Soldiers
Maggie Lockridge, an acquaintance of Fleming's and a nurse specializing in the care of plastic surgery patients launched Iraq Star two years ago. She's also a veteran of the Air Force Nurse Corps.
"Once you're in the military, you don't lose that element of patriotism," says Lockridge, who spent 18 years caring for postoperative plastic surgery patients, during which time she befriended many of the best plastic surgeons in Los Angeles. "I saw all the disfigurements these young soldiers came home with, and it bothered me terribly that these could be my grandkids. I wanted to do something for them."
Fleming says she's hoping to raise between $3,000-5,000 for Iraq Star with the metaphysical fair, which will include lunch, speakers on meditation and psychic phenomena, vendor booths, and prizes that include donated cosmetics, resort weekends, robes, and spa services.
All fairgoers will receive copies of Fleming's new book, More Than Your Eyes Can See, a self-published account of her experiences with extrasensory perception, a gift she says has both intrigued and terrified her since she was a small child.
"I tried to stay away from that for many years," Fleming says. She began to reconnect with the metaphysical after she left the corporate world. "I had always looked on it as a negative thing because I didn't want to feel or know too many things about people. But I want to bring more of my inner self back into my life now."
Spiritual Pursuits
It was her reconnection with the spiritual side of life that drew Fleming into being more intentional about involving herself in charitable work. Although she's been a licensed esthetician only a short time, Fleming's love of skin care goes back to her youth.
"Ever since I was a teenager, I would wrap my friends up in white towels, have them lie down, and give them facials," she says. "All my life I've been interested in skin care. It's all about making people feel good. I love to see people smile, to see and hear their happiness."
Fleming's financially deprived childhood was hard, but one thing she was never short on was love, she says. "My family has always been very loving and giving. We didn't have anything. All we had were hand-me-downs. But we were different from a lot of the families around us. We had plenty of love. I still call my mother every day, and I'm very close to my sisters and brother."
A Career Path
"I never looked for jobs in newspaper classifieds," she says. "If I was interested in something, I would just go for it." That's what happened when she first applied for work at a staffing service. Fleming was confident in her ability to make a good first impression and to talk her way into just about anything.
"People thought I was well educated," she says. "But I always just knew what to say." Fleming won that job and ended up tripling their business.
Change of Plans
Later, she left that company and launched her own staffing agency, a very successful enterprise until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Her company was hit hard. Then, a close employee left, taking Fleming's best client in the process. Demoralized, she closed her business. She wasn't sure where to channel her energy and soon returned to her former interest in skin care.
Needing further education, she studied to become an esthetician and supplemented those studies with reiki, a healing technique that involves channeling energy through touch to restore well-being.
She and her husband moved to the desert, a spot she's found more conducive to her metaphysical interests than northern California.
"There's this energy here," she says of the Palm Springs area. "I love the sun and waking up to a blue sky. There's energy with the people here, too. Everywhere you go you meet people who are in a good mood, and everyone is happy. It's the energy here, the heat, the brightness of the sky, and the people. Something about the metaphysical side of my life is coming out now. I can feel it. There's something out there in store for me. I don't know what it is, but it's a wonderful feeling."
Networks and Notes
Fleming opened her esthetics practice a year ago and built it quickly. She is a natural at marketing, and found that the more organizations she joined, the more people she could connect with and the more clients she produced.
"Everyone I meet, I make contact with later," she says. "I send them notes saying it was nice to meet them. If I see someone sitting alone at a luncheon, I grab them and make them feel comfortable. I talk with everyone."
Fleming feels she's been able to find just the right balance in her life. "I love what I do," she says. "I wouldn't change anything. It's all about working with my hands. Energy, reiki, skin care--it all works together."
Rebecca Jones is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer based in Denver, Colorado. Contact her at killarneyrose@comcast.net.
