Eden Prairie business pays for employee's rare eye condition surgery

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (KMSP) - An Eden Prairie business went above and beyond to help one of its employees.

An eye condition threatened the employee’s sight and the cost of treatment was out of reach.

Bobby and Steve's is best known for saving stranded motorists, but now it saved one of its employee's eyesight.

"I like the environment. My co-workers are the reason I've stayed,” said Amir Adan.

For Adan, Bobby and Steve’s has felt like family for the last two years. Now, he knows his fellow employees feel the same way.

"Obviously I'm really excited about all this. It’s changed my life,” Adan said.

He suffers from a rare hereditary eye condition called Keratoconus, which causes his corneas to thin and bulge out in a cone shape and makes what he sees extremely blurry or in double or triple.

The FDA recently approved a new treatment called corneal crosslinking to stop the degenerative damage from getting worse, but Adan's insurance company doesn't cover the costly procedure.

"If I didn't get this I'd be blind,” he said. “I wouldn't be able to do a lot of the things I like doing."

About a month ago, Adan told a co-worker about his situation and later that night, Bobby and Steve's co-founder Bobby Williams told him the company would help him.

The next day the company's youth foundation gave Adan a check for $3,500 so he could get the surgery on his left eye last week.

"We are a family,” said Williams. “We are a community. Anytime we can do the right thing and help others, that's what it’s about."

Now Adan’s life is coming back into focus and thanks to his employer, he sees how much he's valued   clearer than ever before.

"I've had a fair amount of jobs, all of them say you're like a family here,” said Adan. “We're like a family here. For the first time in my life. I feel like these guys really mean it.”

Adan says his right eye is much worse than his left and doctors have treated that with a special contact lens, but he'll probably have to have a cornea transplant on that eye in a couple of years.