I'll never forget the first time I met PattiJo. The primary thing that stood out to me after hearing her story was that she had more jobs at one time than anyone I had ever met in my entire life. And before long, there she was, asking me about how she could volunteer for Jack's! Honestly I was ...

One of the most terrifying things for us last year during the whole COVID-19 ordeal was how in the heck are we going to raise the funds our mission requires without the ability to gather our supporters in person? Everyone is saying do it virtually but how in the heck do you that?! Enter Chris ...

I first met Mark at our Stupid Fast Go-Karting program on July 14th 2019. He had come to us as he and his three kids were facing the end stages of his wife Teri's metastatic breast cancer. They went on to experience that unspeakable loss on October 1st, 2019. Since then, Mark has gone on to become ...

Rachel is a social services advocate that works in the mental health and substance abuse world. She has a master’s degree in social work and a health educational specialist certification. In 2011 when Rachel was 28, her husband Grayson was diagnosed with leukemia. Rachel was a caregiver, advocate, ...

I first met Logan in January 2020. He had just learned about his loved one's diagnosis and engaged with us right away. That quickness to reach out, unfortunately, is a rare thing for us as an organization to experience. More often than not, guys have been doing the caregiver thing for years before ...

On April 1st of 2021, Jack's Caregiver Coalition made our Jack's Only Facebook group findable by the public. We made it so guys from around the world can find our group and request to join after we review their answers to a short questionnaire. Anyone who's been a caregiver for a loved one with a ...

What Does a Great Caregiver Do? When I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2012, I had never heard of the disease. Learning that I had cancer was terrifying, and it didn’t help that my first husband had died of cancer. My primary care doctor tried to reassure me: “Multiple myeloma is treatable. ...

The Path to Angel Celebrating 20 years of Angel Foundation. A tribute to perseverance, passion, and one so loved, who was lost so many years ago.

The first time he met her, she laughed in his face. It was a cold, January morning in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, in 1992. Dan Cramer was working for a political campaign at a Democratic meeting at the local Holiday Inn, and between presentations, he spotted what he describes as a ‘really beautiful ...

If you’ve ever experienced a catastrophic life event like cancer, death of a loved one, divorce or an accident, it is so important to deal with the emotional trauma that comes along with these events. The way that I've learned to deal with this is through my writing.

“I remember being in the doctor’s office,” Eric begins. “The oncologist and healthcare coordinator came in, and I knew it wasn't good by the look on their faces. Ashley was holding Madelyn when we got the full cancer diagnosis. They gave us the news, started talking about survivorship, and asking ...

It wasn’t a big thing. Many people may not have even noticed it. They might have just turned their heads, stared through the dusty, bus windows and gotten lost in the Peruvian mountainside and the music playing in the one earbud. To Andrés, though, it was a lasting, meaningful impression that would ...

The Meysembourgs came into 2018 on a high note. Their daughter, Mila, was born 3 months earlier, in October, and Nick just became partner in a sales company he’d worked at for over 11 years. They were on a roll.

Sarah DeBord Sarah DeBord lived with stage IV colon cancer since November of 2011, when she was diagnosed at the age of 34. She knew early on that there was no way out of this disease and that it would probably take her life. It wasn’t a young person’s cancer, and she was young. It was ...

Tom Scott: Giving all he had and finding all that matters most. Dani, Tom, Emmett, and Mia A lot has changed for Tom in the past 3 years. Three years ago, his wife, Dani, was diagnosed with breast cancer and given 3 years to put her ‘affairs in order.' Early in the spring of this year, two and a ...

Logan Greene: Talking a lot and saying more. In a year of monumental, global upheaval, where COVID-19 grips the world, and calls for social justice tear at the fabric of our society, people want to get out, but they’re told to stay in. They want to speak, but they’re told to cover their mouths. The ...

Allison Breininger: beyond the pain, the fear, the unknown, finding the grace to accept her role and recognize her own limitations as a caregiver, and sharing those truths with other caregivers. When she was younger, Allison marveled at the exciting and interesting lives others had. She’d grown up ...

Erik Therwanger: caregiving, one goal at a time. Building on the momentum of hope. Erik Therwanger is all about setting goals and meeting them, then building on that momentum to do even greater things. He’s all about giving back, serving others, and looking forward, with hope, toward the future.

Brian Zahn: From real love to real loss, to learning to live again - for their son and because that’s what she would want! Somewhere between classes, tests, parties, and everything else that goes on when young people go off to college, Brian and Melissa met. It was 2005 on the campus of the ...

Mark Mattson: Looking back with fondness and love. Looking forward with courage and resolution, knowing that she will always be with them! Mark & Teri - August 2019 High school sweethearts They met in high school through mutual friends. Soon after, they started dating and continued dating ...

Ishmael Israel: Dreams interrupted by parent’s worst nightmare. Waking up every day now, thinking: ‘it’s the first day of the rest of my life.' Ishmael Israel has spent much of his life helping others. Over the past 2 decades, he has advocated for people in his community and around the country ...

The First Year of Grieving Today, April 26th, marks the first anniversary of my husband’s death. What a difference a year can make in your life. At this time last year, I was running on very little sleep. I was so afraid that he would die while I was asleep on the couch next to him. By the day he ...

Caregiving is an interesting and winding journey Blessings in the Storm Until you, yourself, are a primary caregiver for someone you love, you have no idea what this adventure entails. In a way, it’s like being a kid that’s been transferred to another school, in a new country with a foreign ...

Rich Anderson: Breaking down, reaching out, living each moment to its most, every day. It was 2017, two years into their cancer journey, and Rich was feeling the weight of it all. He was struggling, trying to parent their daughter, Brielle, run a successful and growing business, take care of ...

“When you don’t know, talk to someone who does…” … she’s Diane Leavitt, from The StewARTworks Foundation, and she knows pain management and palliative care, and she’s here to talk about it and educate us.

Last time I saw Bob, he was sharpening an axe and practicing trick throws at an axe-throwing event hosted by Jack’s. Here I was, several years later, in the Dunn Brothers across town in Eagan, just waiting and wondering if there was more to Bob than what I'd seen of him that day.