VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — A deaf teenager in Virginia Beach is reeling after his closed captioning glasses were stolen earlier this month.
Maxx Rogers, 15, said he was at a local Walmart on Saturday, Oct. 5, when his bag was stolen with his glasses inside.
“They are closed captioning glasses,” said his mother, Katie Beth Steele. “So it looks like a regular pair of readers with black frames, but inside of it, you have closed captioning.”
Steele explained they saw the $1,700 glasses online and knew they had to purchase them.
“It really helped me to understand what people were saying, and it just changed my life,” Rogers said. “I was pretty mad and sad about it.”
Rogers was born deaf, and Steele said that having a new way to communicate with him was a gamechanger.
“Getting these glasses, it was just like, we both got to take a big, deep breath,” Steele said, “and I could have his back turned to me, and say, you know, ‘Max, what do you want for dinner?’ And he could be like, ‘can we have burgers tonight?’ And it was just like, oh, a miracle. I was so emotional. I cried like a baby.”