Local tattoo shop, Don’t Look Down Tattoo Art & Piercing decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day a little differently.
The shop had people lined up around the block to get a tattoo for a good cause. For $25 the ink enthusiasts could get a small heart tattooed anywhere other than on their face or hands as long as it was as big as a quarter. All funds were donated to the Heart & Stroke Foundation.
Hope Malster waited in line with a woman that helped raise her and who she considers a second mother, Lisa Spencer who has had multiple strokes.
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“Hope told me she was coming to get a tattoo because I had multiple strokes two years ago, so I wanted to come and get one as well,” said Spencer who plans on getting the heart tattoo on the left side of her chest.
“It’s (the tattoo) going to be a happier memory than my strokes were, the fact that I survived my strokes, I am just happy to be able to donate anything I can and to help,” said Spencer.
Malster’s step-mother also had a stroke, and she wants to honour the two women by getting the heart on her wrist.
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Nikita Blumhagen waited in line with her friend, Dale Bouchard, to honour her mother. Blumhagen’s mother died two years ago from a stroke, they had gotten her first tattoo together when she was 16 years-old, a heart. Now she is getting one again for her.
“The fact that it’s all going to the Heart & Stroke Foundation is something that is really important,” said Blumhagen.
She says she will always believed in the healing power of tattoos.
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“I am going to get the heart above the tattoo I already have for her, it’s a big memorial piece on my thigh and it has her ashes in it. Above it I will eventually add her handwriting too.” she said.
Bouchard is getting a heart tattoo for her great great grandmother who had three strokes.
“She had three strokes in a row and it gave her really bad dementia, she couldn’t remember who any of us were. I was actually in the room holding her hand when she passed away. I was six years old,” said Bouchard.
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