Barber On A Mission To Set Cons Straight

Ron Yapp knows all about second chances.

The 47-year-old owner of the Eastgate Barbershop in Otis Orchards doesn’t just cut hair and collect baseball caps. He travels almost every weekend to the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla to talk with inmates about his faith and his experiences.

He’s a missionary. And he’s an ex-con.

The trouble started in 1975, after Yapp’s first marriage ended in divorce and his ex-wife took their two children out of state. After the divorce, Yapp said, his days began and ended with a shot of whiskey.

“I never went to sleep,” Yapp remembers. “I passed out.”

He hit bottom in 1982 when he robbed a tavern while drunk and was sent to prison.

But in 1983, a religious experience changed him. He began attending prison Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

With a new Christian faith and hope about life, he took barber classes in prison. By the time he was paroled in 1987, Yapp had a new job skill.

Shortly after, he bought the small barbershop in the back of the Eastgate Market. Now he’s an Otis Orchards fixture and has re-married and joined the East Valley Baptist Church.

“Ron is probably one of the finest examples of a renewed mind that we put out of this place,” says the Rev. Ron Willhite, head chaplain at the state prison. “He’s very gentle and quiet, even though he’s a great big dude.”

He looks like what he is - a guy who could be pretty tough if he wanted to be. But the face framed by salt-and-pepper hair and white sideburns is a gentle one.

Surrounded by his collection of 400 baseball caps, he cuts the hair of Bill Hoadley, a regular.

The two talk about the time Hoadley ran over a moose and spin yarns about fishing.

“You get to be friends, you know,” Yapp says.

“He’s the only guy who can give me a good haircut,” Hoadley starts. Then he chides, “It took a long time to train him, but he’s all right now.”

Most of Yapp’s customers know about his past.

“Once in a while, someone will say he better quit going there, they might decide to keep him,” says Kellie Boykin, who works the other chair in Yapp’s barbershop.

There’s no need to keep Yapp in prison. He’s always willing to go back - to preach.

“I encourage the guys to look at their life and consider a change,” Yapp says. He makes personal visits to inmates and holds get-togethers where he and inmates sing, read the Bible and share their stories. The missionary is thankful for the barber classes he took, but believes that without spiritual healing, real reform is impossible.

“You can teach a child molester to weld, and all you have is a child molester that can weld,” Yapp says. “To have anything lasting, they don’t need a new leaf, they need a new life.”

The prison inmates listen to the barber from Otis Orchards, Willhite said.

Yapp knows why.

“I was in a place similar to a lot of guys - they get hooked up with alcohol and … lose families and self-esteem,” he says. “It gives them hope. They think, ‘He knows what we’re going through.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: Saturday’s People is a regular Valley Voice feature profiling remarkable individuals in the Valley. If you know someone who would be a good profile subject, please call editor Mike Schmeltzer at 927-2170.