Sunday, August 11, 2013

ME

Too sick to work
Too broke to play
Nothing much left to use up the day

Made people happy
Made some sad
Always did my best and all seemed glad

Time to reflect the changes in place
Open arms, smiles
Caring and a happy face

The season is over and return I must
To the maker the breaker
The everlasting one

Will I be missed?
Will I remember?
Those who have filled my life with treasure!


JW Mica

Friday, March 15, 2013

Death Row Insurance

Death Row Insurance
   by JW Mica

(unfinished draft)

Chapter One:
LIFE PROFIT OR LOSS


Leonard or Len as most called him started off life as gifted!  During his early days in elementary school while most of the other kids were playing dodge ball, Len was thinking about what college he was going to attend.  It was not long before his parents, actually his mother, as his father had moved on with his life shortly after Len was born, could see Len was not the same as the other kids.  As a matter of fact, once the teachers realized just how smart Len was he was moved from the second grade to high school!  By the time Len was a junior in high school, and only ten years old, he had started taking home study classes to learn different languages.  Since Len kept to himself, and did not like the ridicule, from the other high school kids about his age, he did not want them to know about his home studies.  Len also decided to let his age catch up a bit with his grade level, in hopes this would reduce the spot light he found himself living under.  With that Leonard also took home study classes in law and accounting as well as the fact that he could now speak seven different languages fluently.  By the time Len was eighteen years old and finishing his fourth year at Washington University, he bumped into an Army recruiter on campus.  At that time the college students were protesting just having recruiters on campus, so Len, who never followed the pact, decided to talk with him.  Lieutenant Angelo Potash was the recruiter’s name, and Len took to him like a baby duck, just born, and following the first thing it sees.  Lieutenant Angelo did ask Len a lot of questions about his education and did ask why at such an early age he was already graduating from college?  Len played that very low key, as by this time, Len was an Attorney, CPA, RN and had a PHD in music, art, and botany and could now speak ten different languages fluently.  However, on the outside, Len looked normal, if normal could ever be defined, as he just tried to blend in.  Once you engaged Len in a conversation you quickly realized he was more than he appeared to be.

Leonard who was also an active member of the NRA could handle and shoot just about any gun on the legal market!  Once Len had spent some time with the army recruiter, lieutenant Potash, he was ready to serve his country.  Len wanted to see combat and with all the wars the United States was involved in, this should not be a problem.  It was difficult to keep his education and abilities hidden, but he did, and after boot camp, where he led the pack, he went right to the front lines.  About two days into the campaign, somewhere in Asia, Len killed his first person, a solider with the enemy’s army!  While the first kill should have been hard on person fresh from boot camp, Len was surprised at how well he had handled it.  For the next year, Len did see a lot of combat and actually lost track of how many enemy fighters he had killed.  On one occasion Len was involved in taking a town that was a strong hold for the enemy, only to find out that he had killed some civilians, both women and children.  While this was very hard on him for a brief time, he got over it and it never bothered him again.  By now he felt he was done with his combat training, as he referred to it, and started sharing some of his other skills with his superior officers.  It was not long before Len was moved from the battle field to army headquarters.  During his final time with the army, Len assisted in all translations with the enemy, and became very well know all the way up the ranks.  As Len did not really like all the attention, he left the army when his time was up.  Now with really nothing else left to learn, he felt he should get a job where he could use all his skills without being noticed.  Len applied at Golden Sky insurance company as an auditor, and was hired during the first interview.  Golden Sky Insurance Company was not one of the giants in the industry, but it was a good place for him to break into that line of work.  After about one year working with the Home Office staff and the investment team, the company started showing a profit.  As this was taking place, upper management was starting to take notice of Len, and he was promoted to Senior Audit Manager.  In this position, Len had just about full control of the company’s money management, and it was not long before he was promoted to the position of Chief Financial Officer, CFO!  Then, just as the company was showing substantial growth, the National and even Global economy was heading down the proverbial toilet.   Golden Sky Insurance was tanking, but with Len at the position of CFO, he was able to keep it afloat.  Len, as the CFO did meet a lot of other CFO’s of other Insurance Companies, and always was able to learn something, or some technique from them.  He found that the insurance companies that were not only holding their own, but showing growth in this down market had some interesting programs on their books.  These of course were not your normal investments but something that some people might feel is just plain wrong.  However, since Len had by now developed a very thick skin, he did not really care what the general public said or felt, and was open to anything that could improve the company’s bottom line.  The one thing that Len had a passion for was leaving a place better than he found it.  With Golden Sky Insurance, Len was going to turn things around, and he did.  

Several of the Insurance Companies that Len had developed a good relationship with, actually showed him how they were able to stay ahead of the curve.  These companies had taken out large life insurance policies on many of their key employees, as well as some of the newer ones.  The insurance company as with any company can do this and be the only beneficiary, and not even have to notify the employee or their family.  Also the company could keep the policy active if the employee left their employment, as long as the company paid the premium.  Len also learned that this approach changed the hiring practices in that before this  a company might not hire someone that was sick or had some visible health problems, but now they would hire that same person.  Reason was that the company could take out a life insurance policy on them without them having to even take a physical.  Larger companies, to keep track of all these life policies that they had, incorporated this into its own department, and it was now part of their Profit and Loss statements.  Most companies gave this department a name that would not make it sound as ruthless as it really was.  Just think, a young man, just out of college, with a wife and possibly one baby, dies.  The company had taken out a one million dollar life policy and the company and not the widow collected all the money.  The widow never found out about the policy, and because she could not afford life insurance, lost her home and everything she had.  Since Len was now a bit jaded on life, he did not see the loss the widow had to endure, but instead how the company’s profits had just increased by one million dollars! With that Len brought the idea before the Board of Directors at Golden Sky Insurance, and because of Len’s abilities to sell his ideas, and the fact the company was on the verge of bankruptcy without Len, they all agreed to set up a new department.  Soon after that Golden Sky had purchased about two dozen million dollar policies on some of their employees.  The first pay off came about two months later, when one of these employees with the company death benefit, died in a car accident.  One million unearned dollars, the best to get, pure profit less the cost of the policy, was infused into the company’s profit and loss statement.  With that the company took out an additional two dozen policies, and now this project was under the complete control of Len!  The next pay off came about two months later when a company employee died of a heart attack.  This one was interesting in that the employee under normal circumstances would not have passed the company’s physical exam, which was bypassed, and the person was hired.  Another one million added to the profit and loss statement.  It was now clear that this type of investment in death could really help the company, but Len was not happy with how long it took to make the next collection.  The third death came about one month later and another one million was added to the books.  At the end of the first quarter the death department at Golden Sky Insurance Company was showing a large profit, which added to the company’s bottom line as well.  Again, however, Len was not satisfied with the time between deaths even though there were now more the fifty employees carrying the million dollar life insurance policy.

Toward the end of the second quarter, Len started reviewing many of employees that had the million dollar policy and found that a few were actually in the hospital for various reasons.  Since Len was also a Registered Nurse, and about the brightest on the block, it was not hard for Len to enter the hospital where the employee was at, to check the medical records.  In his mind, he just wanted to see if this employee was going to recover, or possibly die.  With the first patient, the employee was scheduled to leave the next day and was fine.  However, the next employee Len came across was not doing well and it appeared the Doctors did not have long to live.  Len of course, very sharp, was able to access all the medical records to see if he could tell when the employee might die.  From all indications, if this employee stayed in the hospital and on the current medication, could survive for another three or four weeks.  With that Len made the decision to speed up the cycle a bit, and injected some medication into the employee’s intravenous bag, medication that could not be detected, and would bring on death within a few hours.  Len had rationalized, or maybe not, that since this employee was going to die soon, there was no harm in speeding it up before the end of second quarter.  This employee died that evening, and another one million was added to the company’s profit and loss statement, making the second quarter much higher than was expected.  With that and during the next two years, Len continued with this same approach to help boost the company profits.  However, by this time, it seemed as if there were not many of the employees with this policy hanging over their head, in the hospital, so the death toll was dropping fast.  Len was thinking of moving on to another company, but wanted to be sure Golden Sky Insurance was doing the best it had ever done financially before he left.  The next thing that Len started doing was checking into the background of the employees with the million dollar policies, to see if there was any criminal activity or seeded past.  The first one that fit this profile was a middle aged man who had an arrest record for DUI and spousal abuse.  Again, the company overlooked this so they could get him on the Death Row policy as Len now referred to it.  After careful planning and observation, Len was able put this employee down, so to speak, as might happen to a rabid dog.  This employee was at a bar, drinking heavy and started a fight with another patron.  Both went outside where, with the help of Len, the other patron was able to kill the employee.  The patron got off for self defense and noting their inebriated condition, no charges were filed.  Another million dollars added to Golden Sky Insurance profits.  This continued until Len felt it might start to look obvious that many of their employees were meeting with an untimely death, so he decided to leave the company.  By the time he left, there were another five deaths, one suicide, one car getting hit by a train when the car got stuck on the train tracks, one by a stray bullet while the employee was out hunting, one by drowning while out at night fishing and one by falling off a scenic cliff while on vacation.  Five million extra dollars for the company, and Len was gone!

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Case Denied / Chapter One


Chapter One:  Naïve  

As with most teenagers I was more interested in my new car, a 1966 Red VW, which my dad purchased for me on my 16th birthday!  Up to that point it was high school and braces, hanging out with the VW club and not really understanding the world around me.  Shortly after my birthday, in 1967 my father had surgery, and mom and I waited for him in the Recovery Room.  In this hospital the “Intensive Care Unit” and the “Surgery’ recovery room were at the top of this circular hospital.  About eleven floors up, with the center being the actual surgery center which made it convenient for the doctors and the patients.  The phone rang in the recovery waiting area, mom picked put the phone, and mom was told that we both could go up to the Recovery Center, and visit with dad.
As I entered the surgery center, the first thing I noticed, were all the beds located along the circular edge of the room.  There were no windows except some very small ones, like those in restrooms, high up where no one could see in.  It was dark, and only lit by those lights similar to those used to focus on your mouth, when you are at a dentist’s office. It seems I was in the room for awhile before I could find dad, but then I spotted him, behind a thin curtain, sitting up on the bed. The bed and curtain reminded me of those you see in a railroad sleeper car, and dad looked good and upset at the same time.  Dad, just sat there, and stared at me for what seemed like a very long time, before signaling me, somewhat cautiously, as he looked around the room several times. Before the surgery, I remembered his hair looking more gray, but now for some reason it looked jet black.  He had a strange expression on his face, like he had just seen a very bad accident, and said to me, in a low shaky voice “I punched one of the doctors!”  I was staring at dad as he said those words, and I felt a sudden pain in my stomach, like when my appendix nearly bust years ago. For a few seconds, I did not know what to say or how to respond, so I said “you did what?”  Then as if saying this for the first time, He said “I hit one of the Doctors,” to which I asked “why?” Looking around the room, very slowly, and turning his head from side to side, like one of those bobble heads you put on the dashboard of your car, dads eyes were beginning to swell up with tears, as he said to me “They are doing”, then he stopped, look around the room one more time, and said in an even a softer and lower voice “They are doing abortions here!”
Dad seemed to drag out the word abortions, and it sounded more like abooorshuns.  I could clearly see that this was very upsetting to him, so I did not ask him any further questions.  Okay, so even if I did not know at age 16 what an abortion was, dad made it sound illegal, which I found out years later it was!  Dad continued talking in that low voice about how women would come up and have surgery, and when dad realized what was taking place, dad told one of the doctors, “I’m going to report you to the police for killing babies.”  If not already confused, I had no idea an abortion had anything to do will killing babies.  According to dad, the doctor grabbed him, and in an attempt to put him back in his bed, and that is when dad punched him.  It was many years later, that I finally realized, what an abortion was.  I read in 60’s, abortions were illegal, and doctors could lose their license, pay big fines and possible face prison time for taking park in them.
Just as soon as dad was through talking about the abortions, dad said with a very hurried voice, and with a somewhat scared look on his face, and still looking around the room, checking to see if anyone was listening, “You need to get me out of here now!”  The now that came out of his mouth, was laced with desperation and fear, and with a touch of panic.  I knew dad was either loosing it, or heavily medicated or did see something that was very wrong, or all the above. As I sat there, it was hard to believe how this day had turned out.  What should have been a normal operation, turned into something out of a Hitchcock movie?  Yes I was only 16 years old, very naïve and looked at dad and said “sure, where do you want to go?”  It seemed now as if hours had passed, even though it had only been a few minutes, and it also seemed as if everyone in the room was looking at us.  Dad drew closer to me, as if to give me a kiss on the check, and whispered in my ear. Dad’s behavior was really starting to freak me out a bit, as I struggled to hear him say “the hospital by the ocean where my doctor works.”  Once again, dad just stared at me, or right through me, closed his eyes and started to cry, and I had never seen him cry!  I tried to explain to my mom, who had been waiting in the other room, and she seemed to understand what had taken place, or at least I thought so!  Mom called his primary doctor, and in those days you could actually get right to the doctor on the phone, at which point he told mom he would make the arrangements at the hospital to receive dad. Doctors also at that time still made house calls!  Then the doctor that did the surgery on dad told us that he would allow for their own medical transport team to move dad, and there would be no charge!  How nice I thought to myself, coming from the doctor that dad had just accused of murder.
At age 53, dad was overweight and was a chain smoker.  He had two prior heart attacks, and managed to survive to this point.  Dad was in his 30’s when I was born, and finally in his early 50’s owned and operated three companies, and had purchased a home next to ocean for $40,000.00.  While that does not sound like much now, most houses during that time were selling for under $15,000.00.  Our family now had a boat, and was living the American Dream, or were we?  The reason for this surgery was that while dad was building his business we moved around a lot.  I actually went to nine different elementary schools during one of those years. In one of the rental homes we lived in, dad fell while climbing one up an attic ladder.  When dad fell, his left leg was broken, and it was not until years later that it started to develop blood clots.  Thus the surgery to cure what was called “phlebitis!”