April 14, 2020
At the end of each semester at St. John’s University, dozens of eyeglasses are left unclaimed in the Lost and Found division of the Department of Public Safety. Fortunately, those glasses are given new life as they are packed into padded envelopes and sent more than 5,000 miles away to southeast Nigeria, where they are desperately needed by citizens who face extreme poverty every day.
“It is always great to be able to help people in need, as St. John’s Vincentian mission calls us to do, and to provide aid to people who are unable to afford a pair of readers, eyeglasses, or even sunglasses,” said Steven Hasman, Quality Assurance Investigator, who helps lead the Department of Public Safety’s Lost and Found division.
He also takes care of the twice-yearly ritual of packing and shipping the eyewear to an initial stop in Ontario, CA, before it continues on to the West African nation.
The Public Safety Command Center, home to the Lost and Found division on the Queens, NY, campus, is the central repository for a plethora of eyeglasses and hundreds of other lost items that are retrieved every year throughout the nearly 102-acre campus. Much of the property left unclaimed for 30 days is regularly donated by Public Safety to nonprofit organizations such as Goodwill and St. John’s Bread & Life, as well as to the University’s Catholic Scholars program.
But the Lost and Found division had no such option for its collection of unclaimed eyewear—until the day Urennaya Okoro ’14C started frequenting the Command Center in a frantic search for her lost, and only, set of prescription glasses when she was a Psychology major in St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
“They disappeared right in the middle of midterms,” lamented Ms. Okoro, who is now pursuing a doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University in Los Angeles, CA. Ms. Okoro quickly settled into a routine of stopping by the Command Center every few days as part of her search.
“As many times as I came by the Lost and Found division, the officers on duty always brought out the box of unclaimed eyewear for me to check if my glasses had been turned in,” she said. “I never found them, but I noticed there were so many other glasses in that box. I wondered what happened to those which were never claimed.”
“This,” she said, “gave me an idea.”
Ms. Okoro’s parents, Emeka Okoro, a native West African, and his wife, Vivian A. Okoro, Ph.D., founded the Compassion in Action Medical Mission in 2004 from their home in Ontario.
“My family is originally from Nigeria. Although not a doctor himself, my dad has friends and associates who are doctors, nurses, pharmacists, surgeons, optometrists, opticians, and other medical professionals from all over the world who come to Nigeria and donate their skills to the mission,” Ms. Okoro explained. “As a social worker, my dad looks at health care as a social justice issue. As a Catholic, he is invested in giving to those in need and practicing his stewardship.”
Ms. Okoro phoned her parents from St. John’s to ask what he thought about adding eyewear to the mission as a resource for those unable to afford proper eye care. With their approval, she drew up a proposal and submitted it to Mr. Hasman.
“It was graciously accepted,” she said. “The year I graduated, the first batch of glasses was sent to my parents’ house.” To this day, once her father receives the eyewear envelopes, he oversees their transportation to Nigeria.
During the past seven years, more than 5,000 Nigerians have been matched with spectacles through Public Safety’s partnership with the Compassion in Action Medical Mission. The organization aims to provide medical treatment and surgical procedures to struggling communities that lack access to adequate health care within the Nigerian state of Imo. The Medical Mission trains volunteer optometrists and opticians to measure, fit, and match the prescription on the eyeglasses with the appropriate patient, Ms. Okoro explained.
Ms. Okoro is very touched by Mr. Hasman’s dedication to the University’s partnership with the Medical Mission; he never fails to get the eyeglasses into her father’s hands.
“Mr. Hasman also sends me an email with well wishes after each package of unclaimed glasses is sent to my parents’ house. There are other organizations that donate eyeglasses to the Medical Mission, but Public Safety has been the most consistent donor of glasses,” she said.
“I am the proud alumna of an institution that practices what it preaches,” added Ms. Okoro.
“I am forever grateful to Steven Hasman and to Public Safety for their continued efforts to provide the glasses to our mission.”