Vanessa Perez feels her life has become a round of dermatologist visits.

The general rule for checking for signs of skin cancer is to "check your birthday suit on your birthday," but the strawberry blonde pores over her skin daily, looking for the scaly growths that are a sign of actinic keratosis, which if left untreated can advance to squamous cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer.

"I had my first ‘AK’ at 16. I’ve had three skin cancers cut out," she said. "Now I go to the skin doctor every three months, and they freeze off 30 to 40 AKs each time."

The 46-year-old mom doesn’t want her son, Henry, to suffer the same fate, so from the time he was born three years ago, she made sure he wore sunscreen and she looked for protective hats that are mandatory for schoolchildren in her native Australia.

Australia, with one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world, implemented its "SunSmart" program in the 1980s as a preventive measure. Since then, kids Down Under have been required to wear a hat to enter playgrounds.

Perez said that when she came to Hawaii, "I was sad to see children on playgrounds without hats on, and that’s reflective of the marketplace as well, because I had trouble finding hats for children.

"I wanted a hat on my baby every day because I’ve seen cancer, but the brand hats were ridiculously overpriced and the cute, affordable hats were cheap in every way — poor quality, design and materials," she said. "Sometimes if you want something done right, you really do have to do it yourself."

Perez is certainly capable of running a business. Before moving to Hawaii four years ago with her husband, a U.S. Marine, she’d had a 23-year career with the Australian army.

She decided to tackle both the lack of hats and the lack of awareness of sun safety.

Her company, Henry Hats, launched this year after three years of research and work to develop a European-style flat cap that is both stylish and adjustable.

The child’s cap fits newborns and expands to 21 inches through a series of eight snap buttons to fit tweens and petite adults. That flexibility is important, she said, because "babies’ heads grow quickly, so it’s hard to keep up with that growth."

A separate blue or pink nonexpandable hat for newborns makes a nice gift or first-portrait accessory. Newborn flat caps are $25; expandable flat caps are $35.

Perez chose the flat style both for looks and practicality, since it doesn’t interfere with children’s activities. The hats are also lined with smooth satin and have finished edges for comfort. She uses recycled fabric to make bow ties herself and with the help of a seamstress.

The hats are made in Bali, and Perez said she has taken care to make sure the factory is safe and employees are treated with dignity and paid well.

Due to the popularity of the Henry Hats, Perez is working on a larger hat to suit teens to adults plus a line of sun hats, as well as bow-tie accessories for both humans and pets. The pet items are called Posh Pets Aloha-Glam collars.

Perez, a member of the Hawaii Skin Cancer Coalition, admitted she contributed to her troubles with actinic keratosis by rebelliously taking off her hats as a youth when she was out of adults’ eyesight.

"I got sunburned a lot. A lot of people don’t know you only need one or two blistering sunburns as a child to develop skin cancer later in life," she said.

There’s a misconception in Hawaii that only fair-skinned people are susceptible to skin cancer, according to Perez. But darker-skinned people who don’t practice sun-safety measures of wearing sunscreen and shading themselves from the sun are at risk of developing acral lentiginous melanoma, a virulent form of the disease.

The most common form of melanoma in Hawaii is lentigo maligna, which remains close to the skin surface for a while, appearing as a flat or mildly elevated mottled tan, brown or dark brown discoloration. In its invasive form it is referred to as lentigo maligna melanoma.

Heredity also plays a role. About 1 in every 10 patients diagnosed with melanoma has a family member with a history of the disease.

Even with her trained eye, Perez said that when she developed squamous cell carcinoma, she simply thought the small, hard, pinpoint bump was a pimple that wouldn’t go away.

"You can’t afford not to check your skin. With melanoma you get only three months sometimes."

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ON THE NET

» www.skincancer.org: To learn about sun safety and signs of skin cancer