LI hearing specialist taking aid to China

David Carr has been running McGuire's Hearing Aids and Audiological Services, a business started in Riverhead by his parents 41 years ago, for more than a decade now. Carr has expanded to include diagnostic testing -- and visits to China to provide deaf children with hearing aids, which he pays for himself.

Carr and his two young daughters will be leaving for China in a few weeks. It will be his second visit, and Chinese health authorities, he says, were so impressed with his first go-round they have asked him to return to teach their hearing professionals how to test for hearing disabilities.

In 2005 Carr tested 300 children and provided hearing aids for 298 of them -- two were completely deaf, he said, and couldn't be helped. He paid $10,000 for the hearing aids out of his own pocket.

Carr will be preceded in the city of Fuzhou, in Fujian Province, by Frieda Toback of Patchogue, an audiologist who has worked for him for 12 years. She will test 70 to 80 children, she said, and feels "very honored to be asked to do this." Carr will follow to fit the aids he's donating.

Carr does similar work at home. In 2009 he started an organization, Help America Hear, which works to provide hearing aids in all 50 states.

He does it all, Carr said, so that his daughters "can see that there is good in the world."