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Karole Smith had nowhere left to turn.
Her daughter Kristen then 11, suffered
from Muscular Dystrophy, and medical bills
were streaming in. Unable to afford health
insurance, Karole and her husband,Keith, an air-conditioning technician, spent ever spare cent they had on Kristen's care. When they were able to purchase coverage, the company refused to pay for Kristen's treatment, citing industry's standard exemption for preexisting conditions. Worse, the Smiths were beset by collection agencies and the IRS. "As a mother who's supposed to protect her family," says Karole, "I felt totally powerless." |
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Then one day an SUV pulled up to the Smith's Griggstown, N.J. home, and at the wheel was their salvation: Paul Jackson. He paid a lawyer to help sort out their tax problems and offered money to take care of the bills. "If it wasn't for Paul, I would probably be in a mental institution, and my daughter would be in the custody of the state," says Karole, 34, who had phoned Jackson as a last resort. Event after other funds and charities had turned her away, she says, "he helped us get our feet back on the ground."
Paul Jackson, 39, knows adversity and ways to fight it. Eleven years ago the 6'2" former college football player was paralyzed from the chest down by a tumor in his spinal cord. His insurer refused to cover physical rehabilitation costs beyond the standard treatment. Learning of his plight, a group of friends, many of them parents of the Little Leaguers he had coached in his hometown of Westfield, N.J., organized The Paul Jackson Fund to help pay additional expenses. "It was humbling," says Jackson. "But this helps me now because everybody I go to is humbled."
After overcoming the initial depression that set in when he realized that even additional therapy would never help him walk again, Jackson chose to pass along the good will he had been shown. Since 1995, the year he took the helm of the fund originally established to aid him, he has raised $1.5 million and helped more than 100 families in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut pay for needs arising from disabilities or long-term illness. "We help prevent people in crisis from going to catastrophe," says Jackson. Says his friend Kevin O'Callaghan, a construction executive from Rye, N.Y., who is on the fund's board: "When it all has begun to spiral out of control, Paul has found them or they've found Paul." He adds, "Before, it was a decent fund-raising organization. Now I believe it has his soul."
Jackson owes much of that soul to his parents, Thomas, 71 a retired securities analyst, and Barbara, 65, a student adviser. The duo raised their large Catholic family-Jackson is the fifth of eight children-in a seven bedroom, three-story Victorian. "It was a happy home with no privacy and one shower," says Jackson. "Imagine Christmas mornings trying to get ready for 10:30 mass." |
