The couple initially met in optometry school at the University of Houston. Maxwell has been practicing since 1989, and Malik has been practicing since 1991. Malik originally opened a practice near the Hobby Airport in 1992, while Maxwell worked with another partner around Scarsdale.
Eventually, they realized their local clientele base was having difficulty with driving all the way out to Hobby Airport, which was the catalyst for opening the one in the Clear Lake area.
“We started noticing that after being in the community for a long time that people were wanting to come see us, and it was a little far to go over to the Hobby Airport area,” Maxwell said. “We were having to kind of serve the community in our house in some ways.”
Once the business opened in 2007, Maxwell was the main owner until Malik officially joined the practice in 2019 after closing the one near the airport. The first focus of the new business was providing sports glasses for children after they saw a lack of them at other optometrists.
The community they practice in has a large sports presence; Maxwell said “everyone is very sports minded.”
“I just kept having people asking for sports glasses for their children, and it just kind of floored me that nobody really had a focus on kids and recreational sports glasses,” she said.
Despite the pandemic putting a small hurdle in their operations, the couple officially opened back up May 5, 2020, so they could continue to serve the community that was depending on them.
On an average day the couple sees about 18 to 20 patients with problems ranging from medical emergencies to getting fitted for contacts or glasses. They also provide pre- and post-operation services to patients receiving LASIK surgery.
“We’ve just tried to make everybody as happy and comfortable as possible,” Maxwell said.
Overall, the biggest thing Malik and Maxwell could stress is the importance of taking care of one’s eye health, and they iterated the need for regular eye exams.
“Just because you can see doesn’t mean you don’t have things like glaucoma,” Malik said. “Contact lenses are not just a toy. Some people really abuse them. So it’s a health issue. [What’s important] to me is just keeping those eyes healthy.”
