CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- You belonged to a gang. You had the symbol tattooed on your hand. Now you want that job at the bank. Will they hire you?

You loved Mary. You had her name prominently tattooed on your chest along with a big heart edged in flowers. Now, your heart belongs to Jennifer, the love of your life. Will she marry you?

Or maybe you just had a whim one day, a desire to make a lasting impression on the man, or men, in your life.

"One girl had her whole breast tattooed as Goofy, the Disney character. Her nipple was the nose."

Will it fit if she settles into a sedate new life as a soccer mom and Sunday school teacher?

"That's a good example of a bad choice," Adam Miller said. "That's the kind of stuff I can see removing."

Help is as close as Miller's tattoo parlor in Dunbar.

The industrious 34-year-old proprietor of Artistic Creations Tattoos can zap away unwanted body art, including botched jobs, with rat-a-tat rays of intensified light.

"A laser light crystallizes the tattoo ink, and the body's immune system sweeps it away," he said.

Laser tattoo removal isn't new. Availability is. "I've made a lot of calls, and I'm definitely the first tattoo shop in the area to offer removal," he said.

Miller will introduce the service this week by providing free removal of gang-related emblems to retired gang members. If one session won't do it, follow-up visits will be discounted.

"These people need to get cleaned up so they can get jobs and be productive in the community," he said.

Ex-inmates often face the same problem, he said. "They hand poke tattoos because they've got nothing better to do, then they want a job and they're stuck with that hideous stuff on them."

Even such socially acceptable tattoos as names and religious symbols don't always stand the test of time, he said. "The No. 1 thing is names. They insist on getting a name, and then they want it covered. A lot of times, they put it in a place that's hard to cover up, like the neck."

Along with names, Miller expects botched jobs to make up much of his laser business. "With all the new TV shows, tattoos have gained a lot of popularity. Anybody can buy equipment on eBay. That's created a wave of kitchen tattoo artists. They might do it cheaper, but they won't do it better. Some of their work isn't so pretty."

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- You belonged to a gang. You had the symbol tattooed on your hand. Now you want that job at the bank. Will they hire you?

You loved Mary. You had her name prominently tattooed on your chest along with a big heart edged in flowers. Now, your heart belongs to Jennifer, the love of your life. Will she marry you?

Or maybe you just had a whim one day, a desire to make a lasting impression on the man, or men, in your life.

"One girl had her whole breast tattooed as Goofy, the Disney character. Her nipple was the nose."

Will it fit if she settles into a sedate new life as a soccer mom and Sunday school teacher?

"That's a good example of a bad choice," Adam Miller said. "That's the kind of stuff I can see removing."

Help is as close as Miller's tattoo parlor in Dunbar.

The industrious 34-year-old proprietor of Artistic Creations Tattoos can zap away unwanted body art, including botched jobs, with rat-a-tat rays of intensified light.

"A laser light crystallizes the tattoo ink, and the body's immune system sweeps it away," he said.

Laser tattoo removal isn't new. Availability is. "I've made a lot of calls, and I'm definitely the first tattoo shop in the area to offer removal," he said.

Miller will introduce the service this week by providing free removal of gang-related emblems to retired gang members. If one session won't do it, follow-up visits will be discounted.

"These people need to get cleaned up so they can get jobs and be productive in the community," he said.

Ex-inmates often face the same problem, he said. "They hand poke tattoos because they've got nothing better to do, then they want a job and they're stuck with that hideous stuff on them."

Even such socially acceptable tattoos as names and religious symbols don't always stand the test of time, he said. "The No. 1 thing is names. They insist on getting a name, and then they want it covered. A lot of times, they put it in a place that's hard to cover up, like the neck."

Along with names, Miller expects botched jobs to make up much of his laser business. "With all the new TV shows, tattoos have gained a lot of popularity. Anybody can buy equipment on eBay. That's created a wave of kitchen tattoo artists. They might do it cheaper, but they won't do it better. Some of their work isn't so pretty."

Miller believes in credentials. He worked as hard learning to take off tattoos as he did training to put them on.

In July, he enrolled at Rocky Mountain Laser College in Denver, Colo., home base of Dr. Lorenzo Kunze, the reigning guru in laser tattoo removal.

"Then I bought the best equipment I could find," he said. The missile-shaped laser machine shoots short flashes of intense, energized light through the skin to the tattoo pigment. The pulsating beam breaks the inked pigment into particles that the immune system can flush away.

The color vanishes instantly. The treated area beads up, creating a kind of outline of the original tattoo. "That's called frosting," Miller said. "It lasts about 45 minutes, like a tattoo healing."

The procedure stings, much like tiny pinpricks or getting spattered with specks of hot grease. To make clients more comfortable, Miller also invested in a Zimmer Cryo machine that numbs the skin by blowing out air chilled to 32 degrees below zero. "It still stings, but that takes a lot of the pain out of it," he said.

An average session under normal circumstances costs about $250.

The number of sessions hinges on the amount, type and depth of the ink. He recommends 30 to 45 days between treatments. "In Denver, I removed a whole city scene off the back of a guy's head in about 15 minutes. He still needed two or three more sessions."

Artfully inclined through school, Miller directed his talent mostly toward air brushing until a friend, a tattoo artist, introduced him to tattooing. "I got a biker's skull. After I got one, I was kind of hooked."

He opened his colorful, '50s-era tattoo parlor in 1997 in a transformed car wash inherited from his grandfather. "I built the whole place," he said. "Everything was done by me and my buddies. Every dime I've made, I put back in here."

In the evenings, he hightails it to a garage up the road where he does automobile pin-striping and custom painting and builds, paints and restores antique cars.

His mother inspired the tattoo removal service, he said, but he didn't follow through exactly as planned. "She died of lung cancer last year. In her last days, we were talking about what I might do with my inheritance from her. I told her I would do something with the business.

"We got to talking about removal. She said it would be great if I got rid of my tattoos. Even though I'm doing well with the business and she got so she approved of it, she didn't like me being all tattooed up. I came home with tattoos when I was 17, and she was appalled."

He hasn't removed them. A tattoo artist without tattoos?

Reach Sandy Wells at 348-5173 or e-mail san...@wvgazette.com.