Ashley Niwa shows off her new semicolon tattoo Saturday with artist Falefitu Taefu at Gas City Tattoos.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
mcranker@medicinehatnews.com@mocranker
A free tattoo event this past weekend raised $4,000 for the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Organizers Fitu and Erin Taefu were unsure of how busy their Saturday semicolon tattooing event would be, with little promotion other than a couple social media posts and a story in the News.
When the pair got to Fitu’s workspace at Gas City Tattoos early in the morning, people were already lining up.
“We didn’t even set a donation goal; we thought we’d maybe get $100 for the mental health association,” said Erin. “We pulled up to the shop and there was cars waiting there for us. We heard that someone was waiting since 7:30 a.m.
“At that moment we knew it was going to be a busy day.”
The event was put together quickly after another young man in the Hat passed away from suicide. The couple wanted to get the community talking about mental health, and to break the stigma around men needing help.
Fitu started tattooing around 9:30 a.m. and didn’t finish until 12 hours later. He was able to finish 80 semicolon tattoos during the event.
“By 10 a.m. the lineup was all the way down the block,” Erin said. “I went outside to hand out candy to the line and I realized the line was not getting smaller. That was the point where we had to set a limit.
“We felt bad about turning people away, but Fitu is only one man.
“There’s so much cleaning and sanitizing between people, we were averaging about 10 minutes per person.”
The Taefus heard a number of stories throughout the day about mental health struggles which was humbling, Erin says.
“So many people shared stories of their struggles or their loved ones’ struggles,” she said. “The youngest person we tattooed was 16, with parent consent, and they opened up about their struggles. That was really touching and eye opening for us.
“Our community is hurting right now and we just felt like we needed to do something. We didn’t want to wait before it was too late.”
The Taefus will be holding another free semicolon tattooing event in the future. They will be teaming up with other artists from around the city so more people can get a free semicolon tattoo.
Information will be announced @fitutataucanada on Instagram.
