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Hear, Hear!

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Dietsch's Hearing Aid Center Celebrates 50 Years

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By Celene Adams

 

 

“Our clients,” says Monica Dietsch, owner/president of Dietsch’s Hearing Aid Center, “stay loyal to us.”

The many customers crowded into Dietsch’s unassuming storefront on 30th Street in North Park last Monday to help celebrate the store’s 50th anniversary attest to that claim, as does the fact that although at least four other hearing aid centers have opened nearby, Dietsch’s customers keep coming back.

“It’s because we treat them like family,” Monica says.

Family is integral to the Center’s longevity. Dietsch’s daughter, Elizabeth,and her brother, Bernard, also work in the business. So do several others in the Dietsch brood, pitching in as needed to the three-generation affair, which originated in 1955 when Grandpa and Grandma Dietsch (Paul and Inez), left the frigid Canadian winters in search of a more hospitable climate.

“My grandmother had rheumatic fever when she was having her last child, … and the doctor recommended my grandfather move her to a warmer climate,” Elizabeth recalls. “He packed up his ’55 Chevy, left everything he knew, and came to the United States.”

At first the couple went to Los Angeles, where Paul repaired radios for a large company that subsequently began to manufacture hearing aids. After learning more about the devices, he relocated to San Diego where he briefly headed the company’s storefront in the Horton Plaza at 4th and Broadway before opening his own store in 1961.

“Back then, hearing aid [distributors] were franchised,” Monica says. They could only carry one manufacturer’s devices. “[Dad] wanted to be able to handle different manufacturers, because not everyone falls into one category. When [he] moved in here, we were able to do that.”

“That’s something that still sets us apart today,” Elizabeth adds. “A lot of people will go to another hearing aid center, and they only offer one or two manufacturers. They may be fit with a hearing aid that’s the best choice for them to choose from, but maybe it’s not even close to what they really need.”

There are about seven major hearing aid manufacturers in the world, and Dietsch’s carries five of them, with approximately 15 different models from each. Monica demonstrates one, unhooking a delicate, metallic, raspberry-colored gadget from behind one of her own ears. No bigger than a lima bean, it could almost pass for an earring; a far cry from the unwieldy, unsightly contraptions her father carried in the 1960s.

“When [Dad] started, hearing aids were the size of a digital camera,” she remembers. “One of the first portable devices had a battery pack on a long cord that taped to your leg. The ear molds were black rubber, and you had to have a plaster of Paris cast made of your ear; whereas, today we use silicon molds.”

The contrast between the slight, unobtrusive device Monica wears and its bulky forerunners is striking. But there is one similarity: the modern version is also connected—just not to a wire taped to one’s leg. “I can answer the phone through mine,” Monica gloats.

Other customers are equally thrilled with the multi-tasking capabilities of modern hearing aids. Elizabeth laughs recalling one 16-year-old client whose teacher reprimanded him because he’d hooked his hearing device up to his Nintendo remote control and was playing a game while in class.

Hearing aids are becoming high-tech accessories, much like Bluetooth technology, notes Zachary Call, a business development consultant with Siemens, which manufactures the devices. In future, Call says, we will be able to implant them in the inner ear. To date this has proven difficult, since the ear canal is extremely moist; however, Siemens will next month release the first waterproof hearing aid, which can be worn while swimming or bathing. “It’s one step closer,” Call says.

Hearing aid devices aren’t the only aspect of the business that have progressed since the Dietsch’s early days. After her father opened a repair service in the store, Monica reminisces, she helped him alter the frequency response in the aids’ transistors and resistors—a skill she’d learned as a child by reading his radio electronics manual. Today, although she continues to fine tune hearing aids, she uses computers.

“Each manufacturer has its own software, and we just hook the hearing aids up to the computer and pull up the information …to change the [amount of output, background noise, etc.],” she says.

Dietsch’s itself has also progressed, expanding to two locations (along with its North Park store it has one in El Cajon) and initiating a mobile service to bring products and services to customers in their homes.

Along with customer care, however, the most important aspect of the store’s evolution continues to be family.

“I’m very excited about Elizabeth taking over [one day],” Monica says.

But she’s also eyeing her granddaughter, Madison.

“[Madison’s] only six,” Monica grins, “but when she’s in the store and the phone rings, she answers.”