When 16-year-old Mara Kern found out her mother had breast cancer, she was devastated.

"Obviously, at first, I was upset and shocked, but I took it as a sign that I was meant to do something."

For Mara, of Cranberry, that meant finding a way to raise money for cancer patients.

"She's always a person with a cause," her mother, Linda Kern, said. "She's the one at school who starts a petition for something. She always has something that she's fighting for."

But this cause hit home hard. Mrs. Kern, 52, was diagnosed with breast cancer July 3 and began treatment soon after.

"This is one of the things that I think about cancer," her mother said. "Not only just the person who has cancer, but the people around them, feel very helpless because they don't have control."

In addition to Mara, her youngest, Mrs. Kern has three other children: Melanie, 23, Brady, 21, and Jaclyn, 19. Each of them took the news differently, she said.

"I think for Mara, it was difficult for her to talk about it, but that gave her an action to take, it gave her something real to do," she said.

When Mara accompanied her mother to a chemotherapy treatment at UPMC Passavant, she was given lapel pins and car magnets that she and a friend sold at Quigley Catholic High School in Baden, where she is a junior. At the time, she didn't know where she wanted to donate the money.

As Mrs. Kern began to lose her hair from the chemotherapy, she thought about buying a wig, which would have cost $300. Then, she was introduced to Hair Peace Charities. The nonprofit group was founded by Pittsburgh radio announcer Bonny Diver, a breast cancer survivor, to raise money to help buy wigs for women who have lost their hair through chemotherapy.

Most health insurance companies in Pennsylvania don't pay for wigs for patients, and Hair Peace Charities offers cancer patients $100 each toward the purchase of a wig.

"That losing our hair thing, even though you know it's going to happen, it's devastating," Mrs. Kern said. Just to have the option of wearing a wig, "it does a lot for feeling good about yourself," she said.

She said she cried the first time she tried on wigs before her hair was gone.

Mara also saw Hair Peace Charities doing other things for her mother. Cards arrive every week from all over the region, offering support in the form of prayer. Women from Ingomar United Methodist Church in Franklin Park made her a prayer quilt. But one of the things that really persuaded Mara to do something for Hair Peace was when the group delivered a meal for her mom.

"One of the hardest things was deciding where the money should go," she said. "As I thought more about it, seeing everything that they were doing for my mom, I knew that it was going to the women."

So, she persuaded her principal to allow the 200-student school to hold a dress-down day. Students could pay $3 to be able to wear jeans and a pink shirt instead of the uniform that's required by the dress code. For another $2, students also could wear a hat.

Through the sale of the lapel pins and car magnets and the dress-down day, $675 was raised for Hair Peace. Mrs. Kern heard about how much was raised when she was very sick from a chemotherapy treatment, and she was overwhelmed.

"I was just absolutely shocked that such a small school had so much participation," she said.

Mara has shunned the spotlight but reluctantly agreed to an interview to bring attention to the charity. "The recognition shouldn't go to me, it should go to Hair Peace," she said. "What I do is just a drop in the ocean."

Mara also is volunteering to help at the Hair Peace annual fundraiser, Recipe for Hope, which will be held Feb. 21 at Sweetwater Center for the Arts in Sewickley. This will be the fourth year for Recipe for Hope, where local celebrities serve food they have prepared.

Giving back has been therapeutic for Mara.

"Knowing that I helped almost seven women feel better about themselves, knowing that I could help brighten their day" has meant a lot to her, she said.

"Maybe somebody my age will read this article and know that they can do something."

For more information, call Bonny Diver-Hall at 412-327-5177 or go to www.HairPeace.org.