Samuel Polo Pierre has lived in Lawrence for more than forty years. He arrived in 1984 at eleven years old, the son of a Haitian mother and a Dominican father, and grew up all over the Northside. He graduated from Greater Lawrence Technical School in 1991, went on to Northern Essex Community College, and found his trade behind a barber's chair.

In 2002 he became a partner in El Corte Mágico on South Broadway. He has been there ever since; today he owns the shop and the building it sits in. A barber hears everything — the rent going up, the trash that didn't get picked up, the kid who needs a job, the grandmother who can't get through to City Hall — and for twenty-four years Samuel has listened to Lawrence from that chair. He is also co-owner of Luxe Car Service, a Lawrence transportation company that puts local drivers to work.

For more than thirteen years he has gone back to Greater Lawrence Tech to teach barbering, training the next generation of Lawrence tradespeople, and he sits on the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering.

Samuel has been a member of Riverside Assembly of God for over 25 years, head usher since 2016 and now a member of the church board. He is President of the NAACP Merrimack Valley Branch and was recognized for community service in 2019. For twelve years running he has organized a back-to-school backpack giveaway for Lawrence kids, and he works with the Good Dad Gang nonprofit.

He and his wife have been married since 2015 and are raising Jade, Nate, Sammy, Gavin, Penèlope and Chloè in Mount Vernon.

Samuel never planned to run for office. A couple of years ago he lost a close friend, and at the service the family asked him to lead the prayer. He came home that night, and his wife — who had watched him pray for months about what came next — told him: “I think you just need to run. I don't know what you're waiting for.”

So he's running. Not on anyone's slate, and not for a title. He is running on five commitments, each with a number attached, and one promise: to answer the phone for every neighborhood in Lawrence, whatever your last name and whatever language you speak at home.

“Trash doesn't care what island your family came from. Neither do I.”