New Eye Doctor ‘Carries The Torch’ OF HIS MENTOR AT COHEN’S FASHION OPTICAL

BY KATHY CHANG

It’s not just a routine eye exam when you step into Cohen’s Fashion Optical. Grab a cup of coffee at the coffee bar or grab a bottle of water, Dr. Angel Arizmendy and Shawn Sadili want to know how you are doing.

“Whether [customers] come in and we catch up or they are meeting us for the first time, it’s just about building relationships,” Arizmendy said. “When I tell patients about a treatment, a drop or something that might be scary, I say ‘Listen, we treat people like family. If you were my family member, I’d tell you to do this because it’s true. We treat people with care. We really care about what we do.’”

Arizmendy is just a few months into owning Cohen’s Fashion Optical at 26 E Main St., but his story with the eye business begins with his mentor Dr. Thomas O’Kane.

O’Kane opened Cohen’s Fashion Optical in Jersey

City and another location at the Freehold Raceway Mall some 25 years ago.

“He got a chance to open a place right after optometry school. He started in Jersey City and eventually opened [a location in Freehold],” Arizmendy said. “He managed the Jersey City location and his sister, Lauri, managed the Freehold location.”

At some point the location at the mall moved to the location on E Main Street.

Arizmendy started as a technician and worked part time and as an intern for O’Kane at his Jersey City location.

“I said, ‘This is kind of cool,’ so I chose to study and went to optometry school in Chicago and became [an eye] doctor,” he said. “I followed in his footsteps. He kind of was like a role model to me, he was my mentor.”

Arizmendy graduated from optometry school last year and came back to his home state.

“Unfortunately, [O’Kane] passed away when I was in optometry school due to cancer, we had stayed in please see COHEN’S, page 6

Letter from the EDITOR: W

elcome to the 07728, a magazine dedicated to the lifestyle and community of Freehold. We hope you have been enjoying our bi-monthly editions so far. This is my first Letter from the EDITOR and I am excited for you to check out what we have in store for our Fall edition.

First off, we are NMG media group, proudly providing over 50 publications within New Jersey and Pennsylvania, specializing in original local content. We have been given the opportunity to delve into all the wonderful and exiting things Metuchen has to offer on a new level with the magazine.

In this issue, Take a Walk on the Wild Side with the Half Mile of Horses Art Walk, which pairs equine history with beautiful artwork. Learn about the walk on page 14. Readers will learn about the Historic Walnford, which offers an opportunity to explore local history on page 16. Rachel Mitzelman is a paramedic, firefighter and the first female to serve as president of the Freehold Township Independent Company No. 1. Her inspirational story begins on page 12. Mouths may start watering as readers learn about Broad Street Dough Company from owner Desdemona Dalia, whose vision of a doughnut business started at her kitchen table. Now her vision has expanded to three family-owned and operated doughnut bakeries. One is located in Freehold, 177 Elton Adelphia Road. Learn about it in 07728’s Boro Bites segment on page 8. Our business spotlight shines on Cohen’s Fashion Optical. Dr. Angel Arizmendy is the new eye doctor that carries the torch of his longtime mentor Dr. Thomas O’Kane. His story begins on page 2. All of this and more awaits on the pages ahead. Enjoy! Editor

inspirational Mouths as ers Company

touch,” he said.

Lauri O’Kane took over the two businesses after her brother’s passing, but due to health reasons had to step away.

“Since I graduated and became a doctor, she kind of ‘passed the torch’ sort of speak,” Arizmendy said. “We’re all like a family here. We’ve known each other for years and we always treat everyone like family. That’s something we really like about this area. All local businesses support each other. Everyone’s here to help each other out, there’s no toxic competition.”

With the “passing of the torch,” Arizmendy is catering to longtime customers of the O’Kanes, as well as forging his own path.

“A lot of people who come in have been coming here for years,” he said. “They were coming in as kids with the O’Kanes and now I’m seeing them, and they are my age. It’s a testament of how they ran their business.”

Now, Arizmendy is a fresh 29 year old stepping into the shoes of his mentor, who began his practices around the same age. Owning his own business has always been a goal.

“It’s always been my personality, if I go for something, why not take a risk, especially when I’m young and fresh,” he said. “God willing down the line, it can provide for a family or pass down to the next generation like [the O’Kanes] did with me. We’re not blood related through family, but they always thought of me like a son.”

Arizmendy, who is half Latino and is fluent in Spanish, looks forward to working with the Freehold community, which has a large “underrepresented and undertreated” Latino population. It may be because of the language barrier or the misunderstanding of medication, he said.

“We find a lot of cases of undiagnosed blood pressure issues, diabetic issues and some autoimmune conditions just by looking at the back of the eye,” he said. “If you think about it, looking at the back of the eye is actually the most noninvasive way to check the patient’s vascular health without injections or X-Rays.

“If we see bleeding, we say, ‘Hey, when is the last time you got bloodwork done?’ If we see swelling, ‘How’s your blood pressure? We can check it here real quick.’ There’s a lot of patients who have gotten bloodwork done and they say, ‘Doc thanks, I haven’t been to a doc in years’ or ‘I didn’t know my glucose was like through the roof.’”

At Cohen’s Fashion Optical, customers will find essentially a “one-stop shop” anything eye related.

“We are a full circle optometry service starting with glasses, anything from designer frames to something super fancy, pricy and high end to a quick fix in an hour, which we can do in our laboratory we have in back,” Arizmendy said. “We have something for everybody. We do contact lenses. I do specialty contact lenses. For example, people who have a hard time reading up close eventually have bifocal glasses, which we have in contacts too.

“Naturally we do the medical side of it. We manage a lot of glaucoma, a big condition that causes a lot of permanent vision loss. We monitor [those cases] here quite a bit. [We also monitor] diabetes, hypertension [and] cholesterol in the back of eye. People will come in with eye trauma from scratches and stuff like that.

“So, everything from looking good in a pair of glasses to feeling good in a pair of contacts and making sure your eyes are particularly healthy. We try to do everything here,” he said.

Arizmendy said they also co-manage patients who need surgery or laser at a certain point in their treatments.

As the new business owner forges his own path, he said a big thing for him is to get out into the community and give back.

Raised by a single mother, who he gets his Latin Columbian roots from, Arizmendy said he knows what it’s like being on the other side of the spectrum, not coming from a lot and going to bed hungry.

“To be able to give back is a really good feeling and I’m very blessed and very lucky to be here,” he said. “Everything comes full circle.” 

07728