Stratford native Joel Westrum owns a new business in the East Village. The growing residential population downtown and a need for Spanish-speaking health-care professionals in Greater Des Moines factored into his decision to open Westrum Optometry at 315 E. Fifth St. in early October. The 30-year-old Westrum learned Spanish while living in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from 2001 to 2005 and studying optometry at a university there. His background in Spanish is helping his new business grow.

Why did you decide to become an optometrist?

I guess I’ve known since I was about 12 that this would be my career. Everyone in my family was a farmer, and I remember my dad saying that he thought this would be a good alternative. Farming has a lot of uncertainties, especially at that time. His suggestion took hold.

Where did you go to college?

I did my undergrad studies at the University of Iowa and then stayed in Iowa City for a year to work in a laboratory. Then I moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to do my training at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico School of Optometry.

Why did you leave the mainland United States for your training?

There are only about 14 schools of optometry in the United States, and the closest one is in Chicago. I like to travel, so I decided that it would be fun to live in the Caribbean for four years. And I thought it would be valuable to learn Spanish.

Did you have any problems with the language barrier?

I had only taken the required Spanish classes in high school, so I really didn’t know the language starting out. Being a U.S. territory, a lot of people there speak English. People would see me and assume right away that I only spoke English and speak English to me. I had to ask them to talk to me in Spanish. I could have gotten along fine without learning much Spanish at all, but I made a point to learn as much as I could because that was one of the reasons why I was there.

How long did you live there?

I spent four years in Puerto Rico, from 2001 to 2005. I graduated from school in the spring of 2005.

What was your first job out of college?

I started working for the Wolfe Clinic. I worked at several of their offices in different parts of the state. I told them when I started that it would be a short-term job for me, and that my goal was to open my own business.

Why did you want to open your own business?

Working for yourself is motivating, and you have a lot more freedom to do things the way that you would want them done. Plus my wife, Karime, and I had this plan of working together. It’s nice to be able to work with her and make this a family business. Growing up, we both kind of had that. My parents worked together at farmers markets, and Karime’s mom used to work with her dad at his doctor’s office.

What’s it like working with your wife?

We see a lot of each other, but it’s nice. We just got married in 2005, so we lived apart those four years while I was in Puerto Rico. Plus you know that you can trust the person you’re working with and know that they really care about making the business a success. She is an artist, and we’re using the office to display some of her artwork, like a studio of sorts.

Why did you choose Des Moines as your location?

I don’t know of other optometrists here who cater to Hispanics. About 80 percent of our business so far has been Spanish-speaking customers. We knew going into this that we would need this niche to jump-start the business. It’s a competitive field in Des Moines, and we needed something to set us apart.

What makes the East Village a good spot to be?

It’s centrally located to the people we want to serve, and the East Village is growing fast and expanding off Locust Street. There are many lofts nearby now and more on their way, and we think the people living over here need services like ours. And it’s a good location for us to serve the Hispanic population, because many of them live just on the other side of the Capitol.

Where do you live?

My wife and I are restoring a house near Summerset. It’s an 1860s log cabin that the U.S. Army built during the Civil War. It used to be a fort during wartime, and then it became a dairy farm in the 1950s. It’s an interesting house, and it’s one of the reasons why we chose to move here.

What do you do outside work?

I work on the house a lot. But one of my favorite things to do is skiing. My family used to go out to Colorado when I was a kid, and now I try to get out there as much as I can.

-Sharon Baltes