Some day or night in the last four months, on his way to somewhere now forgotten, the owner of one particular pair of wire-rimmed prescription glasses accidentally left them behind on a Metro Transit bus.
At one time, Metro personnel would have chucked those glasses and countless others they find every day into the trash.
King County Councilman Pete von Reichbauer saw that happening years ago, and could not believe it.
“I saw they were throwing them away, and I said, ‘That’s ridiculous; people can recycle,’ ” von Reichbauer recalled.
For close to 20 years now, von Reichbauer has worked with Metro Transit to collect glasses left on Metro buses and deposited in its lost and found. Whatever eyewear remains unclaimed, von Reichbauer delivers to the Auburn Noon Lions Club and its Lions Eyeglass Recycling Center program in Olympia.
Once the center has identified the prescription, it puts the glasses into the hands of doctors and Lions Club members, who take them to 187 countries throughout the world.
Ultimately, the spectacles end up in the hands of people who otherwise could not see clearly, or at all, because they could not afford glasses.
Tuesday morning, the Lions Club unloaded in the parking lot of the Auburn Golf Course boxes overtopped with 3,000 pairs of prescription eyeglasses Metro bus drivers had collected since Jan. 1.
“When you think about it, glasses cost about $196 for a prescription pair, and sometimes up to $500, and here are more than 3,000 glasses that you can recycle. This is a good example of making fortune out of misfortune. Somebody left their prescription glasses on metro buses, and you can give these to people who could not afford them,” von Reichbauer said.
“These glasses here, these dark prescription glasses,” von Reichbauer said, gripping a pair, “can give somebody who cannot afford glasses an opportunity to see again, thanks to the Lions Club.”
“Thank you to the transit personnel, to pick those glasses and take the effort to get them to us, so they don’t go in the trash and go to waste, but do go somewhere in the world to someone who needs them. The ones that pick them up and put them in the box are the ones who keep us going,” said Auburn Noon Lions Club President Ron Bohlman.
Indeed, thanks to efforts like that of the Auburn Noon Lions Club, the center in Olympia has received more than 2 million pairs of high-quality specs over the years.
Founded in 1917, the Lions Club worked with Helen Keller to fight blindness. Today clubs throughout the nation conduct vision screenings, equip hospitals and clinics, distribute medicine and raise awareness of eye disease and are known for volunteering for many different kinds of community projects.
Thanks to the Von Reichbauer, the Auburn Noon Lions and Metro Transit, every day, somewhere in the world, hands fumble for glasses, find them, put them on – and a world comes into focus.
