RECYCLING METAL AND LIVES: Trading steel and styling hair, Mickey Coffino has built successful businesses while lifting others out of trouble spots.

AuthorLeccett, Pace

Michelle "Mickey" Coffino is a study in contrasts. She's a woman who owns a scrap-metal yard that buys tons of used auto and electronic parts and other industrial material every month. Queen City Metal Recycling & Salvage is part of an industry 99% dominated by men.

She also owns MC3 Salon and Wellness Center in Charlotte's Midtown neighborhood, cutting hair 30 hours a week during mornings and weekends, overseeing six colleagues. She works afternoons and nights at her salvage business in an industrial area north of downtown.

The 53-year-old entrepreneur is also a crusader for giving formerly incarcerated men and women a second chance. The scrapyard came first, but the idea to employ ex-offenders followed soon after. Of her 20 employees, "all but two or three have records," she says. Some were violent offenders. Others, including a former attorney, were convicted of white-collar crimes.

The metaphor isn't lost on her. "Recycle metal to recycle lives," she says. "No one should be punished for the rest of their lives for a two-minute mistake."

Her businesses pay the freight, but Coffino prefers talking about her pet causes of prison reform and mental health. "I work to make a difference," she says, "not to make money."

Yet, she's displayed business prowess. She bought the company in 2013 when revenue was about $1 million annually. Within three years, Queen City Metal topped $15 million by adding both industrial clients and individuals she calls "peddlers," who drive through buying various metals. The business has shrunk in the last three years as scrap prices have plummeted due to China's slowing growth and less competition among the steel companies that buy metal from recyclers, she says. Revenue dipped to $8.5 million in 2017 and $6 million last year.

Her business career started when she began styling hair at 17 in Los Angeles' Hollywood neighborhood. She moved to Charlotte in 1994 because she didn't want to start a family or raise children in California. Among the many hats she wears, Mickey Coffino is also a single mom. She has triplets who are now 23: a daughter who runs social media for Queen City Metal and who lives with mental illness; a transgender son; and a son who's a recovering heroin addict. All three are now thriving, she says.

Coffino says there shouldn't be any stigma associated with mental illness, addiction or incarceration. "You're only as sick as your secrets. So, I don't have many."

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