CV’s Maggie Francisco Had a Clear Vision of Career Path
Photo by Kat Staggs
Young patient Penny Lopez enjoys her office visits with Dr Maggie Francisco.
“Fifteen-year-olds don’t always make the best decisions, but I made a great one,” laughed Dr. Maggie Francisco explaining her early decision to become an optometrist. Dr. Francisco soon will celebrate her first year anniversary as an optometrist at Castro Valley Optometry Group, although she has been practicing optometry for the last seven years.
Dr. Francisco attended Independent Elementary School, Canyon Middle School and Castro Valley High School (2008.) Maggie credits her CVHS sophomore English teacher for her career path. Students were assigned to research a job and write a paper on it. Having worn glasses from an early age, Maggie chose to shadow her optometrist at Castro Valley Optometry. She left the office that day with the resolve to become an optometrist and never wavered, graduating with a BS in Bio-Chemistry from University of the Pacific and a Doctor of Optometry from Southern California College of Optometry in 2016. She continued her education with a residency in Austin, Texas, concentrating on pediatrics and vision therapy.
Always interested in medicine, Dr. Francisco said optometry went to the top of the list because it was “medicine without blood!” She could help people with something “central to their lives—their vision.” In addition, in the private practice of optometry there is plenty of time to develop relationships with her patients and opportunities to educate them. At CV Optometry, all patients are allotted 40 minute appointments which she really enjoys. “No one is rushed.”
Dr. Francisco is passionate about educating parents about the need for children to have routine vision exams between six months and a year, at three and five years old and yearly after that. School screenings detect distance vision only, which is not the whole picture, Dr. Francisco explains. “Children don’t know what normal vision is, so parents can’t wait for complaints.” One in four school children have an undiagnosed vision disorder that may affect their school performance. Some signs that children need to be seen by an optometrist include headaches, short attention span, dislike of reading, poor handwriting and sensitivity to light. Early intervention is essential because treatment for certain conditions becomes less effective once the critical period for visual development is over. Ideally, Dr. Francisco said that she would like to see visual treatment started before the age of seven.
Dr. Francisco lives in Castro Valley with her husband Derek Augarten, a middle school teacher in San Ramon and their two-year old daughter. When asked what she likes to do with her free time, she grinned. “Our weekends are pretty child-centered. You can find us at the grocery store and the zoo!”