HOUSTON — A Houston-area optometrist says criminals are targeting her business and others like it, going after high-end glasses.
It's a crime we've covered recently, and she says you could be contributing to the problem.
High-fashion frames are must-haves for trendsetters, but they're also catching the eye of thieves.
“We're an easy target. They know that they can break in, get in and out pretty quickly, they know what they're looking for,” Dr. Elizabeth May, therapeutic optometrist, said.
Dr. May owns Custom Eyes off the Katy Freeway in Spring Valley Village.
Despite security cameras and an alarm system, her optometry office has been burglarized, twice. Just eight days after that, there was an attempted burglary at her other office, in Pearland.
“They've only taken the high end when they're stealing these frames. Two rows, it quickly adds up to $10,000 of retail that they're stealing within two minutes,” she said.
Another appeal for thieves is that most high-end frames don't come with a serial number, making them impossible to track.
It's a crime we've seen repeated in recent years. KHOU 11 News covered one story out of Cinco Ranch in April.
In 2020, in Houston on West Gray, a Sunglasses Hut was targeted.
In 2018, in Sugar Land, a trio stole 62 glasses from a Lens Crafters, totaling $9,000.
“When we were broken into in July of last year, I posted it because I wanted other optometrists to be aware,” she said. “Because it does seem to happen in waves.”
Dr. May said she soon realized her locations were not the only ones being targeted.
“The responses that I got from some of my colleagues, I did not expect,” she said. “It seems like everyone had a story of their office getting broken into.”
And Dr. May says you could be contributing to the problem without even realizing.
She says if you find designer frames like these for sale at a steep discount in an online marketplace, it could be because they're fake or quite possibly stolen.
“I just don't know where on the list of Houston crime, does optometry theft fall?” she said. “It keeps occurring. This is not going away.”
KHOU 11 News reached out to police in Spring Valley Village as well as several other agencies across the area, to try and gauge how big an issue they think this is. However, we did not hear back from them.