Who you gonna call?
More and more chiropractors are buying ads to lure achy clients. So who are these guys? Well, meet Koby. Actual name: Leonard.
By RODNEY THRASH
Published June 18, 2006
His name is known to just about anyone with a television or radio.
His commercials, which offer chiropractic and other services to accident victims, run relentlessly.
His toll-free “ASK” number and catchy slogan blanket buses, billboards, bay area Yellow Pages.
And yet, beyond his moniker — Koby — not much else is known about him. He never appears in or narrates the commercials bearing his name.
In one of the television spots, a man’s car is totaled, but he doesn’t have proper insurance coverage.
“Well,” the claims adjuster tells him, “the city has great buses.”
“Koby don’t play that,” a Jamaican-accented voice snaps.
“You better ask Koby,” says another. “1-8-7-7-A-S-K-K-O-B-Y.”
When the camera pans back toward the man, he’s holding the phone to his ear.
So who is the mysterious guy on the other end of the line? Who are any of the guys in the increasingly noisy and crowded field of TV chiropractic?
And why are they suing each other?
Next to the X-ray room, in a corner office, the red light flashes, illuminating the clear “Line 4” button. A man with a buzzed haircut, a lime dress shirt and gray slacks comes alive. It’s a Monday. He says he usually sees anywhere from 60 to 70 patients a day, but business is slow. The sound of the telephone ringing will be the most action he sees all day.
“Let me get this,” the man says. “It’s the Koby line.”
He adjusts his telephone headset.
“Thank you for calling ASK-KOBY,” he says. “May I help you?”
His real name isn’t Koby. It’s Leonard.
“Koby’s an old nickname of mine,” says Leonard Linardos .
He’s not Jamaican, like the characters and narrators in his television commercials. He’s Greek. But he loves the Jamaican accent and thinks it’s different, memorable.
He’s 38 and lives in a $400,000, 2,700-square-foot waterfront home in Tarpon Springs with a dog and a cat.
Most days, on his way to work, he stops by a Hess gas station to buy a can of Red Bull. He can’t get through the day without it.
He has a Porsche but rarely drives it. “It’s so small,” he says. “You hit bumps and it seems like everything rattles.”
He listens to Andrea Bocelli , Ozzy Osbourne and Juvenile. He has 29 bottles of cologne. “I’m a cologne freak,” he says. He constantly sanitizes his hands with bottles of Purell soap.
He grew up in Gary, Ind., before his family settled in Daytona Beach.
He played professional jai-alai until he tore his Achilles tendon, a career-ending injury that forced him to figure out something else to do with his life.
He enrolled in Life University, a chiropractic school in suburban Atlanta, in 1995. While there, he says, the concept of ASK-KOBY was born.
“Every time you turned on the TV,” he says, “there was an auto accident injury referral service.”
He figured he would replicate the marketing technique when he opened his practice.
He graduated from Life in June 2000 and opened his first clinic, West Coast Spine & Injury Center , in February 2003. It’s in Holiday.
He has another office in Tampa and plans to open a third in Lakeland.
He launched his first ASK-KOBY advertisement on WBTP-FM 95.7 in October 2004. When he started, the commercials were $5,000 per month. Now, marketing Koby monthly costs $40,000.
As many as 60 percent of the patients that walk through his Tampa practice are referred through his Koby marketing arm. In Holiday, he says, the figure is closer to 20 percent.
If somebody rear-ends you and gives you a backache in Tampa Bay, you can also ask Dave. Or Jery. Or Gary.
Dave is David Dismuke, an Auburndale lawyer who works for Burnetti P.A., which has offices in Lakeland and Tampa.
Jery is Stephen Steller , a St. Petersburg chiropractor who owns Spinal Correction Centers.
But Gary Kompothecras calls himself “the creator.”
The 46-year-old Sarasota man recently filed a lawsuit in Hillsborough Circuit Court against Linardos and Steller. Kompothecras, president of 1st Health Inc., a chain of accident clinics throughout Florida, accuses Linardos and others of copying the 1-800-ASK model from him.
His commercials started airing locally in January 2003, more than a year before Linardos’. At the time, Kompothecras alleges, no other company had the toll-free ASK number.
“There’s only one creator,” he says, “and there are three copycats.” The case remains unresolved. On his lawyer’s advice, Linardos wouldn’t talk about it.
Copycats or not, what would lead anyone to call any of these guys?
Rachel Taylor says she figured, “what’s the worst that could happen?”
In October, the New Port Richey woman was on her way to work, stuck in traffic, when a car slammed into hers. Her back ached and she needed treatment. She didn’t have health insurance. Taylor says the help line was the first number that came to mind.
“You kind of don’t know what else to do if you don’t know anybody and you don’t have health insurance,” she says.
She called Kompothecras’ number first. “The other guy,” she calls him. Two weeks passed before she heard from him. (He didn’t return a reporter’s calls asking about this.) By then, she had already reached out to Linardos, who still offers her corrective spinal therapy.
In Florida, every driver is required to carry $10,000 in personal injury protection. Linardos bills auto insurance providers for his services.
Now, Taylor is the star of Linardos’ latest Koby ad. He says he didn’t pay her to do an on-camera testimonial, though he did give her the gas money she needed to drive from Pasco County to a production studio in Tampa where the commercial was shot. In the ad, Taylor recounts her accident and how she turned to Gary, then Koby for help.
I was on my way to work, stopped in traffic. I watched him look up and realized he was going to hit me. I mean I knew I was hit, but it was kind of like what happened.
When I called that 800 number . . .
A black background with white letters slides across the screen. “First she called the other guys.”
. . . they didn’t pay attention to what I was saying. I was telling them I was in pain, and I was telling them I was hurt and they looked at me like I was crazy.
When I called them and told them I wanted a new doctor, they took two weeks to get back to me and by then I was like, well, forget it.
Another black screen. “Then she called 1-877-ASK-KOBY.”
The red light flashes again. Linardos glances toward the telephone on his left. He presses the blue speakerphone button.
“Thank you for calling ASK-KOBY,” he says. “May I help you?”
The caller doesn’t ask with whom he’s speaking. He just begins telling his story.
Rodney Thrash can be reached at (727) 893-8352 or rthrash@sptimes.com.