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Janis Presley, who was presently employed as a hearing representative at Von’s in Arcadia, has died at the age of 61.  Jan died on Sunday, March 28th, in her sleep at her residence in Sepulveda, California.

She had been suffering from lung cancer for the past six months.  Born on August 21, 1948, she got into insurance, and particularly claims “back in the day”.  Her mother was a legal secretary related to insurance, and her sister, Judy Baldwin, also has had a career in the insurance field, as well.

John Riggs, the claims manager of the self-insured, self-administered Disney Resorts in Anaheim, California, knew Janis well early on.  John wrote to me so beautifully about how Jan gave him his very first training in Workers’ Comp claims, that I’d like to include long quotations from John’s correspondence to me here in this article.

“I first met Jan in July, 1975, at the Kemper (Kemper Insurance Company) office in San Francisco,” John wrote to me on Friday.  “She was Jan Wadsworth at that time.  I started out as a Group Health Adjuster sitting in a 12 person office next to a grouchy, scary, alcoholic property guy. I was in my early 20s.  That was my first exposure to WC.  There were all these people sitting at desks with literally ‘towers of claim files’ on their desks.  The only thing I knew about Work Comp at that time was that my Group Health didn’t coordinate benefits.”

After a couple of months, John had his Group Health program under control. So, he asked Jan if he could help out in any way.  She immediately put him to work on making 3 point calls.  Soon, he was transferred over to a Work Comp claims desk and given a company car along with training on how to take statements and write reports. “That’s how I got started in WC,” John remembers well.

“Jan was a good friend to me at that time in my life.  I remember when she married Troy Presley, supposedly a cousin of Elvis. I came to L.A. for a 3-day party.  I last saw her at the Spring 2009 CSIA Conference at the Disneyland Hotel. I had not seen her for a long time.  While I was making some of my opening remarks, I called out to the audience that “my first WC supervisor” was in the audience and had her stand up and be acknowledged.

“Jan gave me a set of hand-blown wine glasses for an apartment warming gift when I moved into the same apartment complex (that she lived in) in Pacifica.  I still have those wine glasses.”

That was totally like Jan to give a gift.  That was her style: she would show up at the dinner party with a gift for the hostess, or come up with a housewarming gift for someone.  She was well socially educated in that way.

Janis (I always called her Janis) picked out my kitchen table. To this day, that table she chose for me is in my kitchen.  She chose a country style with blue cushions and insisted that I buy two chairs with the arms on the sides, and the other two chairs with no arms.  She knew well how to put a household together and what was what in terms of furnishings and fixtures.

When I first met her back in the mid-1980s, she had just left Utica Mutual--which then had an office in the San Gabriel Valley--where she was the workers’ compensation claims supervisor.  She was interested in working as a temporary adjuster, which was very lucrative in terms of pay at that time.  Therefore, I placed her as a temporary adjuster at Mission Insurance Company, in their Glendale office.  Mission was going out of business and fell into liquidation in the mid-1980s and was run under the authority of a conservator from 1985 to about 1987.

While Jan was working as a temp for Mission she met Ray Garcia, who was a long term claims supervisor at Mission.  They became friends and from then on, socialized together. In fact, Jan called Ray just exactly a week ago and said she was going to take a nap and then would call and come over to his house in Mission Hills, where Ray lives with his wife, Linda.  But Jan wound up not calling. 

“She was a kick,” Ray Garcia said recently about Janis Presley.   She was out going and funny and loved to have a good time.   She was always the outgoing, upbeat extravert at the party.  Indeed, she was the definition of “the life of the party”. 

But Jan also had her challenges.  She was married for a short time to a second husband, Don Payne, back in the late 1980s. (I am guessing that she divorced from Troy Presley.) Thus, she went by Janis Payne for a while.  But, soon some things in Don Payne’s background came out of the closet and he wound up in prison.  Then, Jan had to cope with that ignominious embarrassment.  It caused her enormous pain and heartache, and she shared her circumstances with me at that time.  She wound up hiring a criminal defense attorney who had been a fellow student with me at USC during our undergraduate days.  Small world.  She and the attorney and I got together one evening and went to the famous Chasen’s restaurant in Beverly Hills for dinner.  At a nearby table, we saw George Burns! We got such a kick out of that.  He was almost 90-years-old even back then! So, even under stress Janis could have a great time.  And, she could move on…

Thus, Jan picked herself up and adopted a baby girl on her own in around 1990.  Her name is Jena, and she was in the house with Jan the night she died.  Jena will turn 21 years old in June of this current year.

Jan and her husband and Ray Garcia were over at my office late one evening during the late 1980s period.  Since my office on Doheny Drive in West Hollywood was a converted residential flat, it had a fireplace.  So, along with our drinks and our hors d’oeuvres, I lit some logs in the fireplace for a nice mood effect.  But, somehow it got really hot in the room to a temperature which was beyond toleration, so Ray piped up and said, “Gee Lovey, it’s hotter than a four balled tom cat in here.”  I will never forget it.  Ray Garcia’s wit is hard to forget.  I think that’s why he and Jan liked each other.

Jan is survived by her daughter, Jena, and by her older sister, Judy Baldwin, of Rohnert Park, California.  Jan’s Memorial Service will be held at Forest Lawn in Hollywood Hills, on Monday, April 5th, at 3:00 pm in the Church on the Hills. 

Writer Lonce LaMon's email address is lonce@adjustercom.com