L.A. Care Health Plan has teamed up with the family of Leonard Nimoy — the actor who played Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek — to promote efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Los Angeles-based health carrier is putting Nimoy's image and Mr. Spock's famous parting phrase, "Live Long and Prosper," on one of the billboards it's using to promote mask-wearing and use of COVID-19 vaccinations.
L.A. Care provides or administers health coverage for 2.3 million people in Los Angeles County.
Nimoy played Mr. Spock from 1964, when he appeared in Star Trek's first pilot episode, "The Cage," until 2013, when he had a role in "Star Trek Into Darkness." His character was half human and half Vulcan. The inhabitants of the planet Vulcan prized logic, and Mr. Spock faced conflicts between his emotions and his desire to be logical.
Nimoy died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in 2015 at the of 83.
The Nimoy family offered to let L.A. Care use Nimoy's image after seeing some of the company's first COVID-19-related billboards.
