Photography: Dustin Ashcraft

Most people would consider learning that you had a brain tumor the same day you quit your job to open your own business a major setback.

Most people would take months to recover from brain surgery and return to normal, day-to-day existence.

Stephanie Waterman is not most people. Waterman has been the top producing Farmers Insurance agent in the Coastal Bend area since the year she opened her doors here in 2000, but the road to that grand opening was a long one.

When she was 17, Waterman went to work for the largest State Farm agent in San Antonio to earn money while she was in college. "That's when I realized I wanted to own a property and casualty agency," she says.

Once she set the goal, it was full steam ahead. "I worked for State Farm through college, but when I graduated, they were in the middle of a hiring freeze," she says, "so I sold group health insurance to large and small businesses for employee benefit packages."

But she did not lose sight of her goal. While she plugged away selling health insurance, she saved her money so she could go out on her own.

"In September of 2000, I decided I had saved enough, and I could make the jump," Waterman says. She resigned from her job on a Monday and headed to Corpus Christi, where she would open her own agency.

"I was so excited that morning in the car," she says. "I had the radio on, and I was singing … but then I started to notice that I was having funny vision." She called her doctor, who told her to come in right away.

She drove straight to his office and had an emergency MRI, with devastating results. It was a brain tumor. By Tuesday morning, she was sitting in a brain surgeon's office. "I had just quit my job and was starting another one that was totally based on commission," she says.

But in typical fashion, Waterman didn't hesitate. The surgeon told her the prognosis was not good: She was going to lose her right eye, and the odds were that she would not survive.

"He asked me if I wanted to think about what to do. I asked him what he was doing Friday," Waterman says.

He couldn't believe she was ready for such a drastic step. The potential side effects were terrible and should be carefully considered, but Waterman was sure. She had the surgery that Friday, and the results were phenomenal.

"It was radical surgery," Waterman says. "They pulled out part of my skull and cemented it back together, but they were able to save my eye, and everything went the best that it could go."

Her surgery date was Sept. 11, 2000, and she considers that the day she got her life back.

But then the real challenges began. Waterman lived for months with blinding headaches, severe double vision and memory loss and too many medications to count. She was also trying to start a new business and raise a 6-year-old as a single mom without being able to drive.

To compound the struggle, "I had some of my insurance licenses, but not all I needed," she says, "so I had to study for the tests wearing an eye patch and struggling with the headaches and memory loss."

But failure was not an option. "I did it. I was driven. I was going to succeed no matter what," she says. Waterman got her license by Nov. 15, an amazing two months after her surgery.

"I sold the amount of business it takes to open up your own business in five days. Most people take a year to do that," she says with a smile. By the end of the next year, she was the No. 1 Farmers agent in the area, and she has held that title ever since.

Her strategy is simple: giving her customers the most coverage for the least amount of money. "My favorite thing is helping people and improving the quality of their lives," she says.

Many agents don't focus on life insurance like she does, but she finds it satisfying. One customer bought a policy just because Waterman told her how important it was, and then a few weeks later, her husband was diagnosed with leukemia and passed away.

"Stories like that are so sad," Waterman says, "but it makes me so thankful that I did my job, and the family is taken care of."

The other piece of the puzzle is her staff. Waterman trains her agents to ensure that customer care is a top priority. She likes to hire agents who have not worked anywhere else and train them herself so that their full potential is maximized.

She rewards them with amazing vacation packages and other incentives so the business continues to grow. "I run a tight ship – tighter than most other agencies," she admits.

But it all comes naturally to Waterman, who started her first business at 11 years old. "It was called Lawn Doctors," she says. "I was the marketing director, made all the fliers, got the customers and hired all my friends to pull the weeds out of their gardens."

In college, she served as an ambassador for the University of Texas – San Antonio, and started the college's first business fraternity.

"I've always been driven, " Waterman says. "The surgeon told me that the meningioma tumor that I had was usually seen in women between the ages of 28 and 35 who are very career driven."

She has won many awards throughout her professional career, but last year, she received her highest one yet: the President's Council award. This is given for production and overall excellence, and the recipients are the top fourth of the top 1 percent of all agents in the country.

"It was a great honor because the award is chosen on subjective criterion – not just sales numbers, but how much you give back to your community and how your overall performance is," Waterman says.

Waterman's latest adventure is a charitable one: She is a new member of Clowns Who Care, a philanthropic group of local women who visit the children at Driscoll Children's Hospital. Only an elite few are selected to join the group.

Now Waterman looks forward to many fun adventures with the children as "Glitzy the Clown," and if hard work and determination are involved, it is safe to say that she will be good at it.

For more information, call 361-906-9400.