Pauletta Tonilas, right, daughter of longtime Beauty Inc. owner Dee Lombardi, welcomes longtime customer Donna Boxler, 91, during their final week in business at the salon in Wheat Ridge on Wednesday, March 27, 2024. Boxler has been a customer for 50 Years. When Lucy Nichols lived in Arvada in the 1970s, she chose Beauty Inc. as the place to get her hair done — first in Denver, then in Wheat Ridge after the business moved.
Joe DeMott owns Pietra’s Pizzeria & Italian Restaurant in Wheat Ridge, which is proudly marking its own 60th year in business this year. His pizzeria is less than two miles down West 44th Avenue from Beauty Inc. Customers met at Beauty Inc. to show off newborn babies, a new puppy or the latest car they’d purchased.
Many of its hair stylists have stuck around — Janna was still cutting hair there this week after 43 years and Grace Ann retired from the chair and mirror at age 82, while John, who’s in his 80s, still works at Beauty Inc. A picture of the day that Beauty Inc. opened under Dee Lombardi’s leadership, taken in 1964, sits on the front desk at the salon in Wheat Ridge. Lombardi, second from right, took over the salon at a time when very few women owned businesses. professional baseball player
In her later years, Lombardi was diagnosed with leukemia. She worked right up until she died in September 2021, at 80. In her, she was lauded for her tenacity in “powering through the effects of leukemia to continue to bring happiness, smiles and laughter to her customers and coworkers as she did throughout her whole career.”Tonilas and her brother thought long and hard about what to do with Beauty Inc. after their mother’s death.