If you consider it strange to talk about a lifetime of caring and giving when the subject is a 9-year-old girl, you haven’t met Jenna Rose Hartley.

This week Jenna and her mom, Lisa Molls, made the increasingly familiar trip to Salon Vitor in Antioch, where Jenna donated about a foot of her tresses to Locks For Love to help cancer patients whose treatment had caused the loss of their hair. Jenna made her first contribution in 2008 at the age of 3, donating 18 inches of her blond hair. Three years later she was shorn of an additional 13 inches. And on Monday, another 11 inches brought her total largess to 42 inches – nearly as tall as Jenna herself.

“I’m very proud of my daughter’s selfless act of kindness year after year,” Lisa said this week. “The first time was my idea, but before she did it again at 6 and now at 9, she was telling everyone that she was growing her hair for Locks For Love. … Once we set the date, she starts counting down.”

For Jenna, helping people is what it’s all about.

“I was so excited when my mommy told me I would be giving my hair to kids with cancer,” Jenna said Wednesday as she headed off to school at Knightsen Elementary, sporting her new, shorter ’do.

Jenna’s gift might also make it to TV: she’s making a video to enter in the “Good Morning America” Your 3 Words contest. The video is set to country singer Randy Owen’s song “Braid My Hair,” the tale of a cancer patient’s longing for the return of her hair following chemo treatments.