Luis from Los Angeles Mission.

The homeless population in and around Los Angeles knew her only as “Grandmomma” as she preferred to be called. But Morticia Jackson was no mere ancient crone who’d once had a traditional family. A wealthy woman, her last relative, a 62-year-old grand-niece, had preceded her in death some six years before, when Morticia had already achieved the venerable age of 105. That’s when the very old woman, still in excellent health, decided to volunteer to help the homeless. No mere bag lady, she brought bags of food and clothing to the numerous shelters, making the rounds. She also cooked meals and scrubbed floors, and referred to this last stage of her life as “my exciting new career.”

“Don’t you have a family?” she’d often be asked.

“Nope,” she’d reply, “I did. They’re dead.”

She had made the acquaintance of California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard, and had purchased from him any health coverage she might need in case she became ill. But it turned out to be just a precaution. Morticia never even caught a cold. A lesser woman might have just considered herself invulnerable and left it at that, pleased with her good fortune and resolved to die in her sleep someday. But by the time she walked into Matt’s office, still with a spring in her step, she’d acquired a new “family.”

Matt always marveled at Ms. Jackson’s energy. “You sure got spunk,” he’d say.

“I used to,” she’d say, “When my husband was alive. But he died a while back. His spunk died with him.”

“How long has it been?” Matt asked, a little curious.

“Sixty-three years this Tuesday,” replied Morticia.

What she told him next astounded the California Health Insurance agent, not that she wanted to buy a final expense life insurance policy, but what she wanted it for.  Besides taking care of her funeral and burial expenses, she wanted it to provide extra money for the city’s homeless population. It would have to be specially written and comply with California law. But it would be one gift of many from one Morticia Jackson to the people she now loved.

“Why are you doing this?” Matt asked.  “They’re strangers to you.”

“No they’re not,” she replied, “They’re my family.”

The backyard garden area of Rebecca’s Ventura home, a split-level ranch, was one of her favorite places. She loved the solitude of tending the various plants, and plucking weeds, which she often did barehanded. One day following the recent Los Angeles area rains, a deluge actually, mudslides were reported in the hills, and so much rain fell that entire homes were washed away.  Perhaps if Rebecca Sunnybrook had lived on a farm, this might have been her tragedy too, but in her own environs, mostly it was a newfound abundance of weeds suddenly proliferating in her lovely garden that she was primarily concerned with. Funny, the worst of the weeds had shiny leaves which reflected the prodigal sun in all its own subtle beauty. She wondered what kind of weed was this, with its creeping fronds and questing tendrils spreading a perverse chaos throughout her once lovely garden?

It was while sitting on her patio drinking lemonade when Rebecca noticed the itching.  By the next day, even after she’d showered, the itching had become intolerable, accompanied by numerous raised blisters and a patchy rash that now had spread over her entire body. Scratching only made it worse, even with her long sharp feminine nails, and Rebecca didn’t have the slightest clue why. She was miserable, and had health insurance, that she knew, and when she picked up the phone to speak to Matt Lockard, her friendly California Health Insurance agent, she sought his advice. “Should I seek out the ER?,” she asked plaintively, her lips bloated and strangely muffling her speech, after she’d related her encounter with the peculiar weeds n her beloved backyard garden.

Matt pondered her tale.  As she waited for his response, he gave her two sound bytes that would linger in her memory. “Poison oak,” Matt said, “Urgent care.” He mouthed a third, “You’re covered,” but she already knew that. She got in her car, a Toyota that still stopped okay, and raced it down to the Urgent Care center less than a mile away.

She was treated with various topical anti-urushiol potions, a potent antibiotic to alleviate the systemic infection, and released feeling much better. She called Matt once again with a sound byte of her own. “No more itchy,” she said, and he replied with his booming laugh.

Max Decimale, 34, was prone to being “stressed out.” Much of this was due to his occupation as a certified public accountant. Income tax season was the worst but certain clients put him through his paces during the rest of the year. California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard was sensitive to Decimale’s needs, and suggested a policy that might offer alternative health options, such as acupuncture. Surprisingly, Decimale got the point. “An acupuncturist is not that big of a deal for me,” Decimale claimed, “I’m used to it. My girlfriend has been needling me for years.”

Lockard even suggested an available point man. “You might try Dr. Hazen L. Lu,” he told his client. 

“Does his middle initial stand for luck?” Decimale wondered.

“Nope, it stands for Lou,” Lockard replied.

“He’s really a Lou Lu?”

“You can say that.”

Dr. Lu was so experienced and the needles were thin enough that it didn’t seem to matter. Max Decimale became increasingly relaxed as the therapy continued month after month. “It calms me,” Decimale concluded, and the point was made.

One day Decimale was in the neighborhood, and he paid a visit to Mr. Lockard in person. “To show my appreciation, I’d like to take you out to lunch,” he told Matt.

Matt Lockard had never been out to lunch with an accountant, and was curious. “Does that mean you’re paying?”

“Of course,” said Decimale.

Lockard decided to take Max up on his offer. They walked about six blocks, until they came to “The Soup Kitchen.”

Feeling especially hungry, Matt entered the tiny emporium with Max and they were soon seated.  “What kind of soup do you want?” Max asked.

“I’ll have the chicken noodle with bean sprouts,” said Matt.

Max had the black bean. As they both sipped, Matt could not help but notice how relaxed Max seemed while they each consumed their cups of soup.   

The Coakleys were refugees from Malibu Beach. When they moved to Ventura, it was difficult for them to fit in. Fred Coakley had been an actor, playing ghouls in zombie-filled horror flicks when he could get the parts; his wife Isabelle an ill-equipped socialite — lacked social skills. Their adorable children Tristan, age 6, and Annie, age 9, were chronically toy-deprived until a passive-aggressive Samaritan philanthropist donated a kaleidoscope for the children to play with. Prior to the children’s acquisition of the sinister toy, the philanthropist had also paid for three policies, a family plan and two individual plans for the kiddies – all purchased from California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard.

The Coakley children weren’t greedy like some children are. This turned out to be a liability, as they quietly shared the kaleidoscope, being utterly mesmerized by its ceaseless morphing colorful patterns – and in staring at the kaleidoscope in their obsessive-compulsive manner which was hereditary for any Coakley; their sweet little eyes became fixated in a cruel way. Strabismus, sometimes known as “cross-eyes” or in Isabelle Coakley’s crazed mind, “the double evil-eye times two,” set in. 

Fred and Isabelle noticed their children’s wandering eyes one night during a family séance. Isabelle became hysterical. “Why are you doing that kiddies?” she screamed, “Why are you giving your Ma the double evil-eye times two?” The children replied in eerie unison, voicing a chilling, sing-song cadenced mannerism reminiscent of some of their Da’s better films, “It’s the kaleidoscope me thinks!”

While Isabelle simply grabbed the nearest axe, Fred had the presence of mind to seek out emergency eye care, something to flush out strabismus when it was kaleidoscope-induced, preferably. A month later, the reunited family came by Matt Lockard’s office after taking the bus there. The children were wearing patches on their left eyes, the sinister ones. Matt was expecting the foursome, being a fan of Fred’s better undead impersonations and of course, being their trusted California Health Insurance agent, albeit by proxy.

“Nice patches,” Matt Lockard opined once the kiddies had ambled in, “Are they pirates today?”

When the children began sobbing, their feelings hurt; well-meaning Matt pulled a toy from a convenient drawer. It was, unfortunately, a kaleidoscope.

She’d wanted to save money. Haircuts were getting expensive. Why not? Marta Higgins mused. Her six-year-old would be getting a home haircut. The boy was anything but pleased. “Mommy; I want to go to the real barbershop.” Too old to have a tantrum, he had one anyway. It didn’t make any difference. Eventually, he was sitting up in a kitchen chair. She had promised to give him a cookie afterwards.      

Chip was well-behaved from then on, trying to sit absolutely still. Marta had never cut hair before. Once she’d dreamed of becoming a stylist in a unisex salon, but that’s when she’d been just eight.  Still, how hard could it be?  After draping a towel over Chip’s chest and shoulders, she grabbed a comb and scissors and just started cutting. Running the comb through her boy’s hair, she instinctively used it as a guide. “Mommy is doing a fine job,” she said to her son, as if to reassure him.

“I wish I could go to the barbershop,” the boy blurted.   

In fact, she was close to finishing, when the phone rang.  Distracted, suddenly she noticed when Chip started screaming that it wasn’t just hair she was cutting. Chip screamed again and was soon sobbing. Was that a piece of his earlobe that she now grasped in the pinching grip of her scissors? Blood came pouring out of the wound, and began running down his face and neck.

“Oops,” she said, “my bad.” She realized how remarkably calm she was.  It was a good thing she kept the phone number of her California Health Insurance Agent handy on the fridge. 

Matt Lockard came on the phone. “Yes?”

When Marta explained what had happened, Matt advised her to save the ear lobe, “Don’t lose it, whatever you do!” he said, rather loudly, to the voice on the phone, “Head right now to the nearest hospital ER, don’t waste a minute!”

“But my friend Sally called. I need to call her back. What if she has an emergency?” Marta said.

“YOU have your own emergency!” Matt screamed, in concert with Chip, who was still screaming.

“It will be expensive!” Marta howled.

“Don’t worry, you’re covered!” Matt explained. 

Thereafter, Chip always hid whenever his mom mentioned the word “hair,” but except for what the boy would forever refer to as his “Quasimodo” scar, he eventually recovered.

Graeme Greeme was first and foremost a designated driver on that fateful New Year’s Eve. Flossie L. Taylor, age 106, had been imbibing single malt Scotch for the simple reason that she still could, and was “drunk as a skunk,” in her own slurred words, as she prepared to get behind the wheel of her silver Porsche for the drive home at 10:45 p.m. He’d been hired for the expressed purpose of “driving Miss Flossie,” as she was now called, but aside from the ancient lady’s typical alcohol-induced stupor, Mr. Greeme noticed something seriously amiss. Although her lightheadedness was less than obvious under the circumstances, all of the other signs, the cold sweats, vomiting, chest discomfort, neck pain, and shortness of breath – were linked inexorably to Poe’s Telltale Heart, as well as Flossie’s. “I’m having a heart attack,” the ancient Miss Taylor managed. Her words were the giveaway. Instead of “home,” their destination became the nearest hospital emergency room. The expensive car became a silver bullet. Graeme Greene’s prompt action saved Miss Flossie’s life. Her words, although uttered through spurting phlegm-coated bubbles of fine whisky, had proved prophetic.

At the Last Lutheran Church of Oxnard, her great-great-grandson, Matt Lockard, who happened to be a California Health Insurance agent with an office in Ventura, spoke a few words in recognition of Graeme Greeme’s selfless and timely act. Lockard’s voice, a slender baritone, was choked with emotion. “Tonight we are honoring a hero. Not only did this man save my great-great grandmother’s life by recognizing the signs of a heart attack and swiftly getting her to the nearest ER where she was thankfully covered due to a Medicare Advantage policy that she’d purchased from me many years ago, but he also did it safely while traveling at a high rate of speed through city traffic in that death trap meant for the racetrack that she owns.” He flashed his beloved ancient relative a withering look, but as usual she gazed back at her younger relative with a disconcerting centenarian’s smirk. Still, waves of applause reverberated through the church. As for Mr. Graeme Greeme, he smiled a hero’s grin, knowing that it was all part of “driving Miss Flossie.”

On the meager lucre Ebenezer C. Scrooge paid him, Bob Crachit was losing hope of getting a tree for Christmas. It was for Timothy’s sake. His youngest,  a diminutive buck-toothed lad in dire need of a charitable orthodontist, reduced to a limp and walking with an odd little cane, was afflicted with Goober’s Palsy, a degenerative illness said to be nearly always fatal since the economic collapse of ’07, when the cure for it had supposedly been lost. “Tim,” an intuitive child of eight years, seemed to know he might die someday, but was constantly embarrassing the Crachits by blurting “I got Goobers!” with the regularity of a metronome. 

“Why must I work on Christmas Day this year?” asked Bob Crachit.  

“Because it falls on a Friday, and that’s a weekday,” replied the irascible Scrooge.

But the next day, a neighbor, Mr. Alfred C. Nice to be precise, gave a tree to the Crachits after hearing of the family’s plight.

“It’s for you, Tiny Tim,” the generous benefactor told the usually mild-mannered youngest child in the privacy of the Crachit’s humble parlor.

“Don’t you ever call me that,” hissed the palsied boy.

Timothy was to rue those incongruously hostile words spoken on the eve of Christmas Eve. As the festive decorating of the tree advanced to its denouement, and Tim was hoisted up into the air above his father’s scrawny shoulders, the boy slipped while preparing to place the Star of David, and was painfully if not fatally impaled through his tender belly.  “Oh Christmas tree!” the buck-toothed boy screamed.  At this point, with a trip to the nearest urgent care center imminent, Bob Crachit needed reassurance and Christmas cheer in the worst way. So he called his California Health Insurance agent, Matt Lockard, to see if “Christmas tree impalings” were covered under his family plan.  As the family eagerly listened, he received his answer.

“Oh yes they are!” he exclaimed upon hanging up the phone.

Later, after being stitched up, Tim Cratchit brought them all back to reality. “God bless everyone,” the palsied boy said with a cookie cutter elfish grin, followed by the inevitable “I got Goobers.”

Professional Athletes Disability Insurance is designed to guarantee the benefits of the athlete’s contract, or protection for young players before being drafted into the professional leagues. Many sports do not guarantee the benefits to the player for longer than the current contract year. If the player is injured and is not able to make the cut during the pre-season their contract may be waived. Matt Lockard’s Insurance Services can show you a disability insurance plan for professional athletes that offers benefits that are structured based on the player’s contract or their income and the type of sport.

For more information contact Matt Lockard at 866-861-0477

Download a Brochure Here

Request a Proposal Here

Loss of Future Earnings

A professional athlete can anticipate income levels and probable playing time. A disability can affect the level of income to be earned in the future and a disability can shorten the career period. As an example, an athlete has no income assurance beyond the term period of the present contract. This plan can insure an income should disability shorten the expected career period.

Contract Completion

The loss of an athlete by disability puts the team in double jeopardy. Revenue may slip and the team must continue to pay the non-performing athlete. These plans can insure the contracted compensation to the athlete, thus relieving the team of that financial burden.

Loss of Endorsements

Endorsement income and fees continue to flow as long as the public remains a fan of the athlete. A political statement, a drug involvement, a drunk arrest, a public relations goof, and the advertiser/endorsers pull back from sponsorship. This loss is also insurable.

Cost of Agents/Managers

During periods of disability, it is in the athlete’s best interest to continue the use of agents and managers to keep the athlete’s value as an athlete and as a product spokesperson keenly in the minds of those who contract for their services. These costs can be insured.

College Draft Protection

Talented athletes may decide to stay in school rather than take early entry into the draft. There is a risk of sustaining a career ending disability during the final college years. These plans are available to insure the future value of a professional career.

Larry loved summer. He preferred that halcyon season to last forever, an endless array of longest days spent frolicking in the California surf & sun. Every year was the same. The days grew shorter. He didn’t surf anymore now that he was approaching fifty and a friend of his had been eaten by a supposedly friendly great white shark down near San Diego. But he still swam in the Pacific, albeit cautiously. As summer waned this year, and with the death of Algernon, his son’s pet turtle, he felt especially saddened. At the turtle’s funeral in the cathedral amid a multitude of mourners, some of them prominent veterinarians and circus performers, Larry realized he needed help — a Freudian psychiatrist’s talk therapy. He knew at that moment that Algernon was the last thing on his mind, but he still cried.

That very afternoon, Larry phoned his California Health Insurance agent, Matt Lockard, who was also a friend. If anyone would understand, it was Matt.  “Hi Matt, I was wondering if my policy covered my seeing a therapist for depression, preferably someone I can talk to in regular sessions, does it?”

Matt Lockard paused to ponder in his characteristic way. “You want to see a shrink?”

“Yes,” Larry admitted, “one of those Freudian guys.”

“I think so,” said Matt, “it’s under psychiatric services.  Sure.”

Matt was also there to listen. “I heard about Algernon’s death,” the California Health Insurance agent consoled, “it was in the paper. Your family must be devastated.”   

“Oh, it’s not that,” Larry admitted.

“What is it then?” Matt queried suspiciously, suddenly a bit perplexed and truth be, maybe a trifle angered at his friend’s obvious lack of empathy. How could Larry be so callous? Didn’t everyone in California love that amazing little reptile?

“I do miss Algernon, and I realize how much he meant to my son and to everyone else apparently, but I just realized that what’s making me sad is seasonal. I love summer, those long days spent frolicking in the Pacific surf, I still swim …”

“And now suddenly it’s over. Summer’s over. I understand completely,” Matt said, starting to grow misty-eyed himself when he realized the enormity of what had been lost.

“I still swim,” Larry repeated, and both men began sobbing.

Need a Medicare Advantage Plan? Call 1-866-861-0477 for a kit.

Our National Anthem

Maisie M. Mynah was a sweet blue haired sixty-eight-year-old from Eureka who other than being able to whistle the national anthem tended to repeat herself and mimic behaviors so that it annoyed those around her. She’d been married eleven times and was still searching for that special guy special guy special guy. After hearing so much lately about health care reform, she decided to call a California Health Insurance agent for advice about her 2010 Medicare Advantage plan. After bussing south from Eureka to the Los Angeles area in order to pay a surprise visit to Max, her 7^th estranged husband, the only one who could still stand her, she looked up an agent named Matt Lockard, whose office was conveniently located in Ventura near where Max kept his bungalow.

“Hello. I’m Maisie Mynah, we’ve never met, but I’d like to discuss switching to a Medicare Advantage PPO. Can I make an appointment?”

“Sure,” Matt said, “When are you coming down?”

Maisie told him her circumstances, repeating herself a little too often, Matt mused. As he listened intently, he waited for her monotonous and repetitive voice to trail off, only it never did, instead it seemed like she hummed what sounded ominously like “saved by zero” the cryptic refrain from a  Toyota commercial, over and over, in the manner of an anthem.  

When Maisie showed up face-to-beak, as it were, it got worse. She strolled into Matt’s office. The bluish-blonde-haired eleven-time divorcee’s gait seemed mincing. Her voice grated on the California Health Insurance agent’s ears. Even simple phrases like “I’d prefer a PPO” repeated like another anthem reminded Matt of toenails scraping across a blackboard.  “I have Medicare Advantage,” Maisie finally managed, “but a PPO will give me more freedom freedom freedom,” she blurted in a parroted paroxysm of repetitiveness.

Matt felt like he wanted to scream. Although he had the freedom to do so he was always so polite to his customers. It was like a curse in these situations. “I’ll set you up with a PPO Medicare Advantage Plan,” he said.

“You mean in my Medicare Advantage?” Maisie squawked. She then proceeded to repeat herself several more times, once again in the manner of an anthem.

Matt kept that cursed smile on his own face – right up until Maisie finally left.  For weeks afterwards, that Toyota  jingle “saved by zero” played inside his head like a trapped cricket.