Cross volunteers to help Jamaicans see clearly

LONGMONT – Richard Cross, a Longmont resident, changes the way people see the world, and for hundreds of Jamaicans, he does it for free.

Recipient of the Boulder County Business Report’s 2008 Health-Care Heroes Volunteer Award, Cross, an optometrist, began treating patients in Jamaica as a part of a larger medical mission in 1996.

He was overwhelmed by the need he encountered.

“We could only physically get through about 100 patients a day so we agreed to come back the next year and get to see some of the people we had to turn away,” Cross said of his first medical mission to…