Kidnapping plots. Ransom notes. Tropical locales. What might sound like a James Bond movie was actually a successful charity drive carried out by the Rotary Club of Blowing Rock, N.C., USA.

Working with the local LensCrafters optical shop, the Blowing Rock club has led a community drive for the past four years to collect used eyeglasses for Give the Gift of Sight, a program that has provided glasses to more than five million people on five continents since 1988.

To remind club members to bring their used eyeglasses to meetings, William Parker brought in a prop when he was 2005-06 club president: his wife’s teddy bear, which he dressed in a vest, Rotary badge, and sunglasses. He named the bear Fuzz E. Vision.

When members of the club began “kidnapping” Fuzz during meetings as a prank, Parker saw it as an opportunity to bring in even more eyeglasses. He decreed that Fuzz could be nabbed only by someone who had delivered a pair of glasses that day.

Then the stakes got even higher.

In November 2006, club member David Wray took Fuzz to Belize, where he and other Rotarians were renovating a children’s dental clinic. The group sent letters with photographs of Fuzz along with demands for a “ransom” of used eyeglasses. The letters were sent not only to the Rotary club but also the local newspaper to encourage the entire community to get involved in the drive.

In the end, 67 pairs of glasses were collected, bringing the club’s year-end total for the Give the Give of Sight drive to 1,758 pairs, and Fuzz was returned unharmed.

“There is a lot of good that you can do and have a lot of fun doing it,” Parker says. “I think that’s the secret to having a successful program of any kind – make it fun and make it memorable.”