"How could this kind of mistake take place?"

SEATTLE - Eddie Mitchell can see it -- the looks people give him. They stare.

He knows they're looking at one thing: the patch on his right eye.

"Kids look at it too," Eddie says. "'You look like a pirate,' " they say. They laugh, like Eddie and I did after he told that story.

But when you hear the story of Eddie's right eye, there's nothing funny about it.

Someone poked it out with a stick years ago, in a fight over drugs. But that's not why Eddie's wearing the patch. He's wearing it because of something that happened a month and a half ago.

"There's the thoughts of how could this happen," says Nate Mullin, Eddie's Pastor and Chaplain at Seattle's Union Gospel Mission. "How could this kind of mistake take place?"

You see, Eddie Mitchell had a glass eye. Past tense.

The 43-year-old former addict took it out one day, and put it on a table to make a dramatic point.

He shouted: "This is what crack/cocaine does to you!"

Now for the twist.

Someone picked up Eddie's prosthetic eye and, "Flushed it down the toilet," says Nate Mullin. The toilet! "Which is like 'wow, how do you do that?'"

And so, that's why Eddie's wearing the patch. The person who flushed it thought it was a rock of crack-cocaine. "When I told him it was my eye, he was really shocked," says Eddie.

That glass eye cost Eddie $3,500. It's money he doesn't have. And so that's the rest of the story, except for one thing: The ending. You can help write the end by helping Eddie get a new glass eye.

Any ideas? Contact me at JohnS@komotv.com