VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — A deaf teenager in Virginia Beach is reeling after his closed captioning glasses were stolen earlier this month.
Maxx Rogers, 15, said he was at a local Walmart on Saturday, Oct. 5, when his bag was stolen with his glasses inside.
“They are closed captioning glasses,” said his mother, Katie Beth Steele. “So it looks like a regular pair of readers with black frames, but inside of it, you have closed captioning.”
Steele explained they saw the $1,700 glasses online and knew they had to purchase them.
“It really helped me to understand what people were saying, and it just changed my life,” Rogers said. “I was pretty mad and sad about it.”
Rogers was born deaf, and Steele said that having a new way to communicate with him was a gamechanger.
“Getting these glasses, it was just like, we both got to take a big, deep breath,” Steele said, “and I could have his back turned to me, and say, you know, ‘Max, what do you want for dinner?’ And he could be like, ‘can we have burgers tonight?’ And it was just like, oh, a miracle. I was so emotional. I cried like a baby.”
His glasses are still missing and Virginia Beach Police confirmed to 10 On Your Side they are investigating the larceny case. However, Steele said the company they bought them from is sending Rogers a new pair after learning about his story.
His family is now also hoping to take what happened to them and make a difference in the community. There’s a GoFundMe that’s been started for the family, and they’re planning to use the donated funds to pay it forward to two others.
“We came up with the idea, whatever is raised, we will be able to purchase these glasses for other deaf children that are in need, which we thought would be really amazing,” Steele said.
All three of the glasses are about to be shipped to the family. However, Steele explains their work is not stopping there.
“We’re going to end up canceling the GoFundMe,” Steele said, “because we want to raise true funds with no processing fees, even if it’s a nonprofit, to make sure that the kids in this community and all over can get a hold of these miracle workers, so that when they are in a community where someone is not signing to them, they don’t have to be in the dark.”
They’re also hoping to make these more accessible to everyone. They hope to eventually take this issue to lawmakers to help get them into the hands of everyone who needs them.
“We’re on a mission, because we’re like, ‘OK, why are these things not covered by insurance?’ There’s probably a reason. We don’t know yet,” Steele said. “We’re meeting with the company next week, so I’m very excited about that, because just like a wheelchair or a hearing aid, I feel like these things should be covered by insurance.”