Inventions Made LA Haye Rich, But His Values Never Changed

All his life, Peter La Haye worked to help people see.

La Haye, 59, made his fortune developing implantable lenses for cataract patients. But perhaps his greatest legacy will be that, despite being a multimillionaire, he insisted on shopping at the grocery store and treated the most sophisticated and simple people the same.

"I think the community lost a very quiet leader," said Donovan Olsen, La Haye's private banker for more than 10 years. "He was a creative individual who we're all going to miss."

The Seattle-area business magnate died with the plane's pilot and co-pilot in a private-jet crash Sunday in northeast Pennsylvania.

A family member said he was on his way to a board meeting of Orbis International, a New York-based nonprofit organization that seeks to reduce avoidable blindness in developing nations. From there, he was to visit his brother in Maine.

Friends and family yesterday described La Haye as a man who never sought to solve problems simply by writing checks. And for all his innovation and foresight, he believed his greatest achievement was his three children.

"He was compassion and true love," said his daughter, Kristi Wood, through tears. "He was just everything you aspired to be."

La Haye was born in Quebec, the youngest son of a beer-company representative. His father died before his birth, and his mother sent him to a Jesuit boarding school because he was one of too many mouths to feed.

La Haye wound up in upstate New York, where, at 14, he met his future wife, Sandy. He dropped out of high school and did a tour of duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he learned about infrared devices being used in the Vietnam War.

After he left the service, La Haye started a fledgling company, Diverse Technologies, which built infrared devices. The tide turned when he won a Navy contract.

Dr. Michael Gilbert, a refractive surgeon in Bellevue and medical editor of Eye Care Technology magazine, said La Haye was a man bursting with ideas.

"It was exciting and a pleasure for me to watch his restless, creative mind," Gilbert said. "He was a pressured innovator. He was always thinking of what he could do in a creative way and how he could help fellow man."

In a later enterprise, La Haye refined the intraocular lens used in cataract treatment. The company was sold in 1980 to Johnson & Johnson for an undisclosed sum believed to be in the $80 million range.

After a short retirement, he started La Haye Laboratories in Redmond, which created the Icaps antioxidant diet supplement to bolster the body's resistance to cataract and age-related macular degeneration. Nestle subsidiary Alcon Laboratories bought La Haye's Icaps line for an undisclosed sum in September.

Oil change spurs invention

La Haye came up with the idea for his next product after noticing the clear decal auto mechanics stick on windshields to remind people of their next oil change.

That led to Neoptx, a company that creates crescent-shaped stick-on reading lenses for sunglasses sold in 18,000 outlets nationwide.

In all, La Haye patented nearly a dozen products for patients with cataract disease and other eye problems.

"He perceived a need before its time," said Tim Sear, chief executive officer of Alcon and La Haye's friend. "He was enterprising, innovative. It was not an easy thing to build his businesses from scratch."

In the early 1990s, La Haye turned his attention overseas. He joined the Orbis advisory council, spurred by statistics that showed 80 percent of the 45 million blind people in the world could see again if they had access to routine eye procedures such as cataract and corneal surgery. Two years ago, he joined the Orbis board of directors.

"He was really all about, `How can we reach more blind people?' " said Pina Taormina, president and executive director of Orbis. "He thought, `It's not fair that these people in the developing world are blind when they don't need to be.' "

La Haye flew on missions to Jamaica and Cuba in a DC-10 equipped with an operating room, where staff members trained doctors and nurses to perform routine eye procedures.

`A tremendous boost'

"They work in very challenging conditions; their accommodations are very meager," said Taormina, whose organization last year honored La Haye for his contributions to the field. "He would just give them a tremendous boost to continue work that's very, very difficult, but critically important."

Despite his work, friends and relatives said La Haye always put his family first.

Wood, his daughter, fondly remembered cooking sessions to make chocolate souffles, as well as the time not long ago when she and her husband moved to a new home. La Haye insisted on helping them move the furniture, even though he could have afforded a mover. When they were finished, he insisted on helping unpack.

He displayed the same devotion to his seven grandchildren. Wood said her father would get right down to his grandchildren's level and play with them. "That made him happy," she said.

Earlier this year, La Haye made news when he and his wife put their 30,000-square-foot, 23-room waterfront mansion in Medina on the market. The $45 million asking price was said to be among the highest for a residence in U.S. history.

It was a far stretch from the bungalow he and Sandy purchased in La Verne, Calif., 24 years ago for $19,000.

Monica Soto's phone message number is 206-515-5632. Her e-mail address is: msoto@seattletimes.com