Fred Stellhorn wants to change the world by helping one person at a time see.

“We talk about how important literacy is, but people can’t read if they can’t see,” said Stellhorn who has served Manteca as an optometrist since 1971.

Stellhorn has founded Contacts for Good. It is an Internet site by the same name (contactsforgood.com). Those purchasing a year’s supply of contacts will generate the funding to buy a pair of prescription glasses for those with eyesight problems in impoverished communities and orphanages in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere. The concept is the same as the website Tom’s Shoes. Those who purchase a pair of shoes from the site trigger the delivery of another pair of shoes to the needy in Third World countries.

Stellhorn assisted by Manteca businessman Jeff Liotard has given eye exams to nearly 75,000 poor Hondurans and outfitted another 50,000 plus with eye glasses since 2003. The effort through Manteca Rotary started in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Manteca dentist Ricardo Cuevas, who was a club member at the time, heard from relatives living in the Central American country that much of the nation was in ruins. Cuevas and Manteca Rotary funded initial relief and then secured several Rotary International matching grants exceeded $500,000 with the help of fellow Rotarians such as Mark Oliver.

Oliver has subsequently worked on numerous relief efforts in that nation through the international service organization.

Stellhorn followed up with the eye exams and glasses not thinking it would become a regular thing.

That all changed at one temporary clinic where a grandmother brought her granddaughter in for an eye exam. Stellhorn and other volunteers wanted to examine her too, but she insisted that it was all about her granddaughter and not her. They kept trying to convince her but to no avail. The exam showed the granddaughter needed eye glasses which they provided. Finally the grandmother relented enough for them to place a pair of glasses on her.

“I remember her shouting, ‘where did all these people come from!’” Stellhorn said.

Her eyesight was so bad since a child that she only saw fuzzy out-of-focus shadows unless they were up close.

They then took the glasses off.

Her reaction: “’Where did all the people go?”’ Stellhorn recalled.

“Here was a woman who had raised five children and had gone all through her life and couldn’t really see,” Stellhorn said. “It moved me.”

To this day when Stellhorn thinks back to that grandmother and the big grin on her face when she could see like most other people, it still chokes him up.



Stellhorn believes

he owes a debt

to California

Stellhorn and Liotard — as well as others — make a trip twice a year to Honduras to do eye exams and distribute glasses. They typically take 5,000 pairs with them at a time. He also travels to Mexico with his sister Sisca Stellhorn. His sister is a Los Angeles attorney who also belongs to Rotary. She is part of a dental care project working with orphanages in Mexico through the UCLA School of Dentistry.

Stellhorn hasn’t forgotten the less fortunate in the Manteca community. His practice is the only one in Manteca currently taking Medi-Cal patients that optometrists receive significantly less for than other patients when providing services. He is currently expanding his practice at Fremont Avenue and Center Street to accommodate more Medi-Cal patients.

What motivates him is simple: A desire to pay back California that made it possible for him to be educated as an optometrist.

“I paid my tuition and expenses,” said Stellhorn who graduated from the University of California Berkeley School of Optometry in 1970 with a student loan debt of $9,400. “But I didn’t pay the entire salary of my professors nor did I pay to build the campus and the facilities. The people of California did.”

Stellhorn was born in Charleston, West Virginia, where his father was stationed as a member of the Seabees.



Worked as Tom Sawyer

at Disneyland

Within two weeks he moved with his family to Santa Cruz where he stayed through the sixth grade.

From there, they moved to Anaheim when it was a tad smaller than Ripon is today with 12,000 residents.

“One day they put up a cyclone fence behind our backyard and started digging holes,” Stellhorn said.

What crews were doing was the ground work for Disneyland.

He ended up going to work for Walt Disney as a 10-year-old selling newspapers decked out as a young Tom Sawyer wearing flip flops, cut-off jeans and T-shirt.

“We sold them for 15 cents each,” Stellhorn recalled. “Disney got a nickel and we kept a dime.”

Stellhorn met Disney a number of times as his boss made a habit of periodically stopping by to talk to the boys who portrayed Tom Sawyer and buying them popcorn and other treats.

His passion as a youth was diving. He was good enough to qualify for the Olympic trials in 1970 and 1974. He also landed a spot on the storied UCLA dive team.

But then he had to have a kidney removed ending his diving ambitions. After being sidelined while recovering he returned to UCLA where he served as the head coach for the women’s dive team back before women competed on NCAA sanctioned teams.

Since the seventh grade, Stellhorn had his heart set on being a dentist.

When it came time to apply for dental school, his mother Caroline Wertz Stellhorn offered to help with the applications given Stellhorn’s heavy workload.

When the letters came back he found that USC and other dental schools said no. But then he got letters with “yes” from universities offering pharmacy school and optometry.

He couldn’t believe his mother had applied to non-dental schools. But then he got to thinking that the mouth and eyes were only a few inches apart so he opted for Berkeley.

After graduating in 1970 he got a job working as an optometrist in Selma. Then he went to work for Dr. Harry Odell who had his office near the Manteca Post Office. He struck out on his own taking over two vacant rooms in Dr. Eisner’s medical practice before having Scott Smith build his present location in 1979.

“Manteca has been very good to me,” Stellhorn said.