A lifetime of lessons: Thomas Petersen on why disability insurance matters

After a car accident cost Thomas Petersen his diving business, disability insurance became more than a career. Years later, it helped his family keep their dream home after his wife suffered a serious injury. (AI-generated image.)

By Noah Lopez

Thomas Petersen lost his diving business after a car accident left him learning to walk again. Years later, disability insurance helped his family buy the home they had dreamed of owning after his wife suffered a serious injury.

The contrast shaped Petersen’s career in insurance and his conviction that protecting income can make the difference between losing what a family has built and finding a way forward.

A family legacy

Petersen's connection to disability insurance began long before he entered the industry. His grandfather operated a dairy farm in Council Bluffs, Iowa, until a severe back injury contributed to the family's loss of the farm.

Petersen's father grew up knowing his grandfather as a janitor, only later learning about the farm and how the injury had changed the family's circumstances.

After earning a scholarship to UCLA, Petersen's father planned to become a journalist. A summer job at Mutual of Omaha introduced him to disability insurance, and he recognized how the coverage might have helped his own family.

That discovery became a lifelong calling. Petersen grew up hearing about insurance from his father, but he wanted no part of it.

“I’d plug my ears and think, ‘I don’t want to hear about that evil thing called insurance. I want nothing to do with it,’” he recalled.

Instead, Petersen built his life around the water. He became a diving instructor at 18 and earned his captain's license by 21. He taught diving, ran commercial dive boats in California and worked in a world that took him around the globe.

Then an accident abruptly changed his course.

Losing the business he built

In the mid-1980s, a drunk driver struck Petersen's car as he returned to the freeway after stopping for a hamburger in California's San Fernando Valley. The collision sent his vehicle across three lanes and over a curb before a brick wall stopped it.

Petersen spent about six months relearning how to walk. As he recovered, the customers who depended on his diving business moved on to other operators rather than wait for him to return.

Within about three months, the business he had built was gone. He had to liquidate everything.

Petersen did not have business overhead expense disability insurance. That coverage can help eligible business owners pay certain fixed operating expenses during a qualifying disability. Looking back, he believes it might have helped him keep the business afloat until he could return.

The loss was financial as well as physical. Even as he worked to regain his ability to walk, the business that had supported his livelihood was disappearing.

While he was trying to figure out what came next, his father asked him to help with marketing ideas. Petersen agreed, thinking the work sounded interesting. Then his father told him he would need to learn the insurance business.

The career Petersen had resisted became his next chapter. His own experience had given him a firsthand understanding of how quickly an injury could threaten a livelihood.

When coverage protected a family's dream

A few years later, Petersen saw disability insurance make a difference in his own family's life.

He and his wife had planned to close on their dream home after returning from a Thanksgiving trip to Hawaii. While walking a trail toward a red-sand beach near Hana, the trail collapsed beneath his wife. She fell about 30 feet, suffering a serious back injury, broken legs and broken ribs.

She was airlifted to Maui Memorial Hospital. Doctors did not know whether she would be permanently paralyzed or whether surgery could repair her injuries.

With the home closing only days away, Petersen faced another urgent concern. The couple had qualified for the mortgage based on two incomes, and he did not know how they would proceed if they were suddenly relying on one.

He called their mortgage broker to explain the situation. The broker asked whether his wife had disability insurance.

She did.

Petersen recalled the broker telling him, “Tom, no problem.” The coverage helped the couple move forward with the home purchase they had feared losing.

His wife ultimately avoided permanent paralysis, but her recovery required substantial care. Petersen continued working on commission while taking on caregiving and household responsibilities. His workdays, which typically lasted 12 to 14 hours, fell to three or four hours at best.

“One disability effectively caused two people to be disabled for that period,” he said.

His wife's injury affected her ability to work, while caring for her reduced the time he could devote to earning a living. Their experience showed Petersen that a disability can affect an entire household, not just the person who is injured.

It was a stark contrast with his own accident. When he could no longer run his diving business, the operation disappeared. When his wife was injured, disability insurance helped the couple preserve a major financial commitment and continue building their life together.

Protecting income

Petersen eventually found his place in insurance, but he never left the marine world behind. He remains involved with the International SeaKeepers Society, which works with yacht owners and scientists on marine research. He still spends time on the water, now as an avocation rather than a career.

His experiences have also shaped the message he brings to disability insurance. People insure their homes and vehicles, he said, but may overlook the income that allows them to pay for those assets and support their families.

A disability can affect a business, leave a spouse with additional responsibilities and force a family to reconsider plans it spent years working toward. Protecting income means preparing for those consequences, not just the immediate loss of a paycheck.

“Your income is the foundation of everything you have,” Petersen said.

He still spends time on the water and looks forward to taking his grandchildren snorkeling, sharing with them the underwater world that has been part of his life since childhood. After losing the business he built and later seeing disability insurance help his family keep the home they had planned for, Petersen's career has come full circle. The coverage he once wanted nothing to do with became the work he believes in, shaped by what he experienced firsthand.