Pointer of Interest: Seeing clearly from El Salvador to Peru
Original article from the Grosse Pointe News
Laurel Kraus
Courtesy photos
Dr. Mike Lowe works with a patient during his mission trip to Cuscu, Peru in November 2019.
About 35 years ago, Dr. Mike Lowe was making $3.70 an hour at Kmart. Determined to make $4 an hour, he traded in the job for a position at LensCrafters and thus began his career in optometry.
“It was a really neat trade to learn, so I kind of fell into that out of sheer tenacity and desire for something a little bit better and then I started talking to the docs,” Lowe said. “They just seemed happy. They seemed like they were enjoying things.”
On March 1, 2000, Lowe bought Bayne Optical in The Village and has worked there since then as clinical director, eye specialist, marketing director and more.
It was in 2006 that he took his first mission trip through the Indiana Lions Club to San Miguel, El Salvador where he and a team of eye specialists treated approximately 1,500 people over three days.
“They gave out these little medallions (and) frankly I leave this on my desk to remind me of the fact that there are many other things that you need to do in life to give back,” Lowe said.
Most recently, Lowe traveled to a Rotary Club in Cusco, Peru in November as part of a team of four doctors, two students and three local students studying to become optometrists.
“What the Rotary Club does there is (Dr.) William (Olivos) coordinates to get glasses donated from different vendors, ships them all down there (and people) are able to pick them out,” Lowe explained. “Local people manufacture the prescriptions that we create for these people and then they just picked them up last week.”
Although it wasn’t planned, Lowe, Olivos and Dr. Tracy Matchinski, three of the optometrists, graduated from the Illinois College of Optometry and realized the trip was technically a small 25-year reunion.
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