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“I’m a Marine Corps veteran," says Cory Schroeder, an agent since 2012. “When I served, I was a member of an elite bomb squad and deployed several times to Iraq. When my friend and fellow Marine, Peter, died in the line of duty, I took it upon myself to look in on his family.” Marines take care of each other.

"I offered help as his widow, Asia, and their three-year old son, Jacob, transitioned into a new life, but one thing I didn’t need to do was offer financial assistance,” says Schroeder. “That’s because Peter had taken care of his family financially with life insurance.”

The military offers basic life insurance coverage, but Peter knew that if anything happened to him, it wouldn’t be enough for his young family. Before what became his final deployment, he got an individual policy that effectively doubled his coverage. It was in place a month when he was killed.

Time to grieve

Asia remembers vividly the strangeness of her loss. “When Peter died, it felt like I was watching a movie — it’s something that happened to other people, not me,” says Asia. “His life insurance was instant assurance that everything was going to be okay financially.” It let her hold her son in her arms and be sad. A gift she never knew she wanted.

Schroeder offered solace. He helped Asia and Jacob as they looked toward the future. In time, friendship blossomed into love. Asia and Cory married 18 months later and formed a new family unit. Jacob and his mom received a certain amount of stability as a result of his birth father’s foresight of buying life insurance, yet he’s proud to call Cory “dad.”

With a family to support, Schroeder wanted a career he could count on. After seeing the effect life insurance had on Asia and Jacob, he became a New York Life agent. “I now help other families — and military members in particular — get their insurance needs taken care of,” he says.

As an agent, Schroeder has made sure that he and Asia are fully protected with comprehensive term and permanent life insurance. Both are fitness fanatics and over time, they became gym owners. As a policyowner and agent, Schroeder’s knowledge base has allowed them to “tap into the cash value of our permanent life insurance policies to put a down payment on a new larger commercial space.”

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