The owners of Mountain View’s Top Hair and Nail Salon vehemently denied to the Voice on Monday that their salon is unsanitary or that it contributed to the death of Jessica Mears, who died in June from complications of an infection she allegedly contracted from the salon’s pedicure spa.
“Why are they calling my shop dirty?” Trang Van asked. “I’ve worked here a long time and no one has ever complained. It isn’t fair the things that are being said about us.”
Van claimed that as a result of media coverage the Salon has seen diminished business in the past week. On Monday afternoon only two customers were present in the salon, which is spacious and includes facilities for hair dressing, nails and waxing. But Van said the regular patrons have not been deterred because “They know we clean the spas every single day, they see it themselves.”
Van and her husband, co-owner Than Phan, describe disinfecting the foot baths with bleach after every pedicure, a ritual they say often keeps customers waiting for up to 15 minutes in order to ensure proper cleanliness.
But last week a surprise state inspection charged the salon with having nearly a dozen violations, including improperly disinfecting their equipment. The California Board of Barbery and Cosmetology, which regulates the salon industry, oversaw the inspection and claims it will begin an inquiry into whether the business had been properly licensed.
Van and Phan deny that the standards for the salon have been below the state’s expectations and point out that they passed a similar inspection in 2005. “We’re not going to change anything that we do here,” Phan said. “We always follow the state procedure.”
Just one day after the inspection, a state Senate committee passed a bill that seeks to upgrade sanitation standards for pedicures and increase fines to up to $500 per foot-spa chair. The legislation was re-introduced by Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Leland Yee, D-San Francisco. A similar bill was vetoed by the governor in 2005.
Yee’s bill follows in the wake of a wrongful death lawsuit against Top Hair and Nails, filed by the family of Jessica Mears. The suit claims that Mears died after a prolonged battle with a mycobacterium infection that caused a large legion to form on her leg. In addition, Mears had lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease the cause of which is unknown.
The salon owners believe it was the lupus, and not the bacterial infection, that lead to the death of Mears on June 20. Mears had been a customer at the salon for nearly 10 years, and Van claims she was sick for the duration of this time.
“She said she had a disease that affected her whole body. She was really tired and couldn’t even raise her hand above her head,” Van said.
The couple’s attorney, Anne Bailey Miller, has noted that Mears had complicated health problems. Additionally, Phan says Mears’ medical history “is 1,000 pages long.”
The extent to which lupus was a contributing factor to her death is difficult to determine. Dr. Jeffrey Brown of Mountain View, who has spent the past 25 years treating lupus patients, told the Voice that the symptoms, physical impairments and life expectancy of a lupus sufferer “is extremely variable. Lupus can cause anything from multi-system inflammation, arthritis, anemia, low white blood cell count, seizures, headaches and lung problems. And some patients just get rashes without much internal organ involvement.”
Questions regarding the severity of Mears’ lupus and its possible contribution to her death remain unanswered for now. In the meantime, the owners of Top Hair and Nails claim that the last pedicure Jessica Mears received from them — nearly two years ago — could not have given her the infection because her foot was not actually placed in the spa. According to Van, Mears had a wound covered by a bandage on her lower leg and she did not have a spa pedicure on that day.
“We just cleaned her foot and put polish on her nails. She did not put her foot in the spa.”
E-mail Alexa Tondreau at atondreau@mv-voice.com
