Dumfries resident Linda Cheeks is a salon owner, avid volunteer, veteran — and mother to many.
The last role is what earned her the title of Prince William County 2024 Foster Parent of the Year from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
In addition to raising her daughter (who now has three children herself), Cheeks estimates she has fostered more than 20 children since she started around 2008. In just the past two years she has fostered five kids.
Cheeks has also owned and operated Linda’s Unisex Hair Salon in Arlington since 2001. Between cosmetology, volunteering in local nursing homes by providing haircuts and fostering, she credits all her accomplishments to being a people person.
“Nobody’s perfect … but everybody comes from something,” Cheeks added. “You try to find out enough about the kids to find out what they’d like and try to steer them into their way … If you find joy in something that you love, then you would tend to stay with it.”
For the teenage mothers in her home, Cheeks encourages them to embrace the supportive programs available to them in the effort of achieving their goals. “What did you learn today?” she’ll ask.
She respects everyone who enters her home, regardless of any differences. “She was able to exemplify and extend this unconditional love,” said Jeanette Ransom, Cheeks’ friend and a client for over 15 years.
Ransom has known Cheeks since before she started fostering and is affectionately called “sister Jeanette” by Cheeks and the kids. Cheeks invited Ransom to the COG award ceremony without mentioning that she was being honored.
“That’s just how humble she is,” Ransom said.
Cheeks is also steadfast, and that shows up in how she is honest with the children about the difficulties in life. “Some of it resonates with them, and some of them it doesn’t, but at least I know that I gave them the truth,” she said.
“It’s not about always fighting your way through it, it’s about working your way through it sometimes. How you handle the situation is important,” Cheeks said. “It’s not the swift that make it, but it’s the one that endures to the end to get to where they need to go.”
It’s not just about preaching what you know but also about living it — and Cheeks embodies that endurance in the choices she has made and the way she leads with love.
“It takes a lot of patience, takes a lot of love,” Cheeks said about fostering. “I just kept climbing the ladder and getting better.”
Elizabeth Arre, another of Cheeks’ longtime friends and clients, noted that some of her former foster children maintain a close relationship with her into adulthood.
“Despite the challenges, she finds immense reward in being part of the children’s journeys, positively impacting their lives and altering their futures for the better,” Arre added.
Cheeks said she tries to keep in touch with the children she has fostered, “especially the ones that give me the most trouble … They were the very ones that kept in touch.”
She also knows that some people will need more than she provides, and she will collaborate with social workers to do anything in the best interest of the kids. “You can’t be everything to everybody,” she said.
The advice she gives her kids is a concept she lives by as well: “You want to get up in the morning and feel like you [are] making a difference in the world.”
