With the help of a little German engineering, a local charity group is trying to help the vision of every child in Kalispell.

The Sunriser Lions, founded in Kalispell in 1969, follows the Lions International mission of helping eyesight. Dave Falcon, the chapter’s president, is heading up an effort to do screenings in all of Kalispell’s elementary schools with a fancy new machine that tests vision from three feet away.

He hopes to do more.

“We are trying to get into the day-care centers and preschools,” Falcon said. “The hardest part is that we want to be known.”

The Lions perform the service free with two Plusoptix vision screeners they purchased for upwards of $8,000 with the help of Flathead Electric Cooperative. Falcon said his organization is focusing on the Kalispell area and has screened more than 800 children from Peterson, Elrod, Hedges, Edgerton and Marion schools.

Last year the Sunrisers screened 2,600 Flathead children from six months old up to fifth grade. Falcon said he’s hoping to top 5,000 children this year, but that would probably only happen if preschools and day cares allowed the Lions to use the advanced equipment.

Unlike other eye-testing machinery, the Plusoptix takes a snapshot of the child’s eyes from several feet away. He makes sure the child is comfortable before he shoots. For the littler ones, this can mean pointing to the smiley face on the machine’s “lens” or maybe telling a joke.  

From that one photo, in minutes the machine will analyze and determine whether the child has astigmatism, farsightedness, nearsightedness, lazy eye or other common eye maladies. 

Falcon and his club do this work entirely on a volunteer basis, but he said an incident last year made it all worthwhile.

“We got a call back from a school nurse,” Falcon said. “She said that one kid needed to go to the hospital and he would have lost his vision if we hadn’t caught it as early as we did. If you can save somebody’s vision, it makes it worth every penny.”

While macular degeneration such as the case last year is rare, other problems are too common to pass up the free exams.

But Falcon isn’t a doctor and neither is the machine. It is just a screening tool that lets parents know there is a problem in their child’s vision. Parents can then take this referral to an optometrist.

Falcon, who has been a member of the Sunriser Lions for 24 years, said that his club also sponsors a food drive, Christmas baskets for parents and other fundraisers during the year.

The Sunrisers meet at 6:30 a.m. on Mondays at the Red Lion Hotel Kalispell. For more information or to help, Falcon can be reached at 257-2258.

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.