Failure

Tom was just like any middle-class kid. He was a good football, basketball and baseball player. His first year of playing organized tackle football he won most valuable offensive player on his sophomore high school team. He made 46 of 50 free throws in a youth basketball competition and was always starting point guard for whatever team he played on. He pitched a perfect game in youth baseball and started in center field batting .632 for his high school JV team his junior year.

Tom played the piano from the time he was 7 and participated in many concerts up until the age of 15. He was a decorated boy scout and earned the rank of Eagle Scout at the age of 15, preserving and mounting a slice of the oldest tree in Burbank at the city's historical museum for his eagle project.

Upon graduating from High School, Tom was admitted to one of the most prestigious private universities in the western united states. At the age of 19 he served a voluntary two-year religious mission. He was called to San Jose, Costa Rica where he became fluent reading, writing and speaking Spanish. He earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish and a minor in Business.

At the time, he wanted to be a Physical Therapist. He had worked for one of the best Physical Therapists in Utah his senior year and was known as one of his top Aides.

Early in January 1995, Tom acquired work as a PT Aide. That first year after college and moving back to California was an eventful one. He was trying to figure things out and find a wife. He met Tanya and once admitted to me he would have married her if they had met five years later. In September, he began working as a substitute teacher. He was so loved that in 1998, he was offered a full-time position teaching high school Spanish without a teaching credential.

Tom described 1998-2000 as "frustrating" professionally. His students all knew him as "the cool sub" and refused to accept the reality that he was their full-time teacher now. Some high school students want to learn and others, not so much. He loved teaching, but wasn't getting much support from parents or administration. That gig ended in July of 2000. He had married Tami in February of that same year.

I'm Dr. Hall. I met Tom in March of 2003 at Cleveland Chiropractic College Los Angeles. He had just begun the first trimester of his doctorate program. Tom and I are upper cervical specific chiropractors.

Tom is an expert marketer. He had worked for a Dr. Stone that was seeing 250 patients a week when he started doing spinal screenings for him. Within a year and a half, the doctor was seeing 433. Tom started teaching others and made an instructional video on how to do screenings, which Dr. Stone sold at chiropractic conferences without his knowledge or benefit.

He did screenings for me, other doctors, and himself. Speaking your truth to strangers with the sole desire to help them is a quality that not many possess. It's difficult to estimate how many people Tom spoke with, successfully screened, and helped during his 16 years of chiropractic marketing.

Tom and Tami had 3 children when they moved to Colorado in January of 2008 to open a clinic for the franchise, Upper Cervical Health Centers of America. Unfortunately, the Real Estate market collapsed a few months later and Tom found himself working as an independent contractor with a Dr. Watts. His practiced failed by January of 2009. He worked as VP of Sales for The US Wellness Chamber of Commerce, but that non-profit proved to be fraudulent. He moved his family to Scottsdale, AZ in January of 2010 to work at International Cruise Excursions, an inside-sales call center. His fourth child was born in August of 2009 .

In August of 2010, Tom moved his family to Cuyahoga Falls, OH. He did so to join Dr. Messer, who was a coach for a chiropractic consulting firm. Unfortunately, Dr. Messer did not compensate Tom fairly for the contributions he made to his practice. He filed bankruptcy in April of 2013.

Tom was positive when he called me in July of 2013. He wanted to return to California to practice with me. I gave him the green light. His fifth child was born in April of 2013.

Tom killed it when he got to California, but eventually things plateaued, his children were attending school in one of the worst school districts in the nation, there were gang shootings two streets down from where he lived, and Tami was tired of renting. His student loan debt from his doctorate was 300K and he had yet to make a payment on it for lack of justification.

Tom had a patient that introduced him to the "Brain Balance" franchise in Utah. He contacted the owner, was hired as a Clinical Director and got a house under contract to purchase.

Three weeks into his training he was fired by the franchise owner for no reason, lost the contract on the house, and found himself back in California. I told Tom he could return to practice with me. Most of his family wanted him in Utah, he wanted to stay in California. He decided to take his 25K inheritance from his grandparents to rent a home for a year in Utah. It was the beginning of the end.

Tom arrived in Utah in August of 2015 unemployed, but positive. He found a job working for a marketing company, but was uninspired. In February of 2016 he joined Dr. Bybee in practice. Despite his first born running away, taking and selling drugs, being in jail most of his teenage years, Dr. Bybee forcing him out of practice, working construction, suffering a failed marriage, being let go from his construction job, being denied a position as a corrections officer for the state of Utah, Tom remained positive.

When the pandemic began, Tom was driving Uber full-time. All in one month, the transmission in his car failed, he was denied his tax refund, one of his daughters disowned him, he received an eviction notice and passed a kidney stone in the ER after taking an ambulance and getting a CAT scan without health insurance.

After being evicted in May of 2020, living in his sisters' basement and being denied custody of his two youngest daughters, Tom moved back to California.

His plan was to work as a caregiver, but due to his 300+K student loan, he was rejected. At that point, it was live in car or live with mom. His car was his only source of income as InstaCart was now his occupation, but it kept breaking down as he trailblazed all of LA county and more. Yeah, he got COVID and yeah, he contemplated suicide the end of 2020, but remained positive.

2021 began with a definitive plan and new hope, but living with mom wasn't part of it. Investing in crypto assets and finding a girlfriend was... When the later didn't materialize, He decided to move to Costa Rica...

I can only imagine his final thoughts as flight 636 crashed down somewhere between the Cayman and San Andres Islands off the coast of Nicaragua, killing him and all on board.

He considered himself a failure in life. Nothing could be further from the truth...