Jeff Jewitt

Matt Durand, me, Lance Moreno (Kirsten Williams’ hubby) NYE 2007.

Josh Wright and me, Burbank, CA, 2007.

Me building the “El Jefe” while recovering from the collapsed lung, 2003



Me chilling at Half Dome, Yosemite, 2004

chilling with my nephew, Jackson, at his first Ms game, 2007
Scoop –

Went to WWU, dropped out after first year. Continued at BCC the next year part time and worked part time at an Italian cheese & pesto factory (CIBO). Oh yeah, and did a TON of skiing, 50 or more days each year for three years, until I finished my AA at BCC. Went back up to WWU and finished out my BA in business (decisional science) in 1997.

A week after being back in Seattle, I found out a friend's (who I graduated WWU with) mother inherited a home in Santa Rosa, CA and she wanted her son and a friend to go down to fix the place up so it could go on market. Sounded like my perfect broke-ass version of an after-college European vacation, so I jumped at the chance.

We came down October 1, 1997 and, when it was gloomy and raining buckets in Seattle, it was 75-80 degrees with beautiful sunshine (for the next two months, too!). It didn't hurt that it was wine country (located right next to Napa county), and the harvest / crush was happening - the sweet smell of grapes in the air!

Needless to say, I fell in love immediately. It took us two months to get the house up to speed and, in the meantime, I was doing some job interviewing. I went back up to Seattle for Christmas, then received a call I had scored a job. So I moved my ass down here permanently and started working.

I had been doing some mountain bike racing up in B'ham, and I wanted to continue. Amazingly, even though CA is the birthplace of mountain biking, there was not a race to be found. So I saw that there was a short little triathlon going on and I signed up for it. Again, immediate love affair. Over the next five years, I worked my way up in distance to the full Ironman. The first one I tried was over in Lake Placid, NY – the temperature and humidity were both in the high 90s and I was spent halfway through the marathon. Wanting to bite that dog, I signed up for another Ironman called the Vineman, which was a local CA race, and finally crossed the line (still had trouble exactly halfway through the marathon, though).

Also soon after moving to CA, I joined a professional trade group and became part of the board of directors. It is an international organization called APICS, mainly for manufacturing industries / decisional sciences. The board I worked on covered all of Northern CA, from SanFran to the OR border. After five years in different roles, I worked my way up to president, and just had a grand old time. It was quite an experience, and invaluable networking-wise, and I still keep up with these folks despite later changing careers.

So, basically just working away and doing triathlon. During my Christmas visit to Seattle in 2003, I went up to B'Ham to visit Matt and Jeneen (Toperosky) Durand and family and do some skiing up at Mt Baker. On our way up to the mountain, some lady just turned across our path (to try to get to a business) on Mt Baker Hwy in pretty snowy conditions. Serious angled head on collision ensued (we were going 45mph). Cars were TOTALLED, but it seemed like the airbags did their jobs and no serious injuries. Seemed! Turns out, I got a small tear in my lung in the accident (of course, I only found this out months after the accident). Probably would have healed on its own in a 2-3 weeks but, four days later, I jumped on the airplane home. It turns out that is not a very good idea and apparently an immediate life threatening situation. Of course, I had no idea, and just thought my rib must have got cracked and that carrying my bags through the airport must have aggravated it.

Wrong! I got home late on a Saturday night and just wanted to sleep forever. Yet, I couldn't find ONE comfortable position - it seriously felt like somebody was stabbing me in the back with a knife. So, after tossing and turning for a few hours, I drove myself to the ER the next morning at 5AM. They took some x-rays, then took some more - turns out they couldn't find one of my lungs! Longer story short, I have really long lungs and one of them was 100% collapsed - it was the size of a fist (normal size larger than 2L bottle) down at the bottom of the chest cavity and the x-ray wasn't big enough to see that on the first try.

Well, once they saw that, it was literally 4 minutes later that I had a tube sticking out of my chest. No local, no pain medication of any type, and they cut right through my pectoral into the chest cavity with a scalpel. Before the procedure, I remember one doctor asking, 'hey, shouldn't we be giving him some morphine?' and the head surgeon replied, 'this guy just flew with a fully collapsed lung, I think he can handle it.' Oh yeah, that's right - stripes from the doctor! It did hurt like a bitch, however, and the rush of oxygen to my brain (remember, I had only been operating on one lung) made me pass out. One more surgery (this time through the side - ouch, but at least used morphine), one month off work, three to six months of no serious strain, and back to normal!

The insurance settlement took a long time, and was confused by the fact it turns out I have an underlying lung disease. The doctor that was so sure at the time of care the collapsed lung was caused by the accident (and, thus, the whole reason I even pursued a settlement in the first place) changed his tune when the disease discovery came up. He then tended to think the collapse and accident were not linked, just coincidental. That pissed me off. From a 99.9% chance to at 10-20% chance. Without minimum 51% causation, no insurance company will settle. In fact, it now appeared that I would be responsible for the hospital bills (over $20K). Good times.

So I set off into some serious research (heck, all kinds of time from not being able to work out). Turns out there are very few materials available for exactly what happened to me because, well, no one flies at commercial airliner elevations with a collapsed lung (confirmed, my neighbor at the time was a helicopter medic and he says they fly just above the water along the coast when there is even a hint of a collapsed lung). So, I had pieced together some of the research, came up with my own theory, and took it to the doctor and the hospital's legal team. Three days later, the appropriate letter made it to my lawyer in Seattle, and the case settled just a day or two later.

After it was all said and done, my lawyer called me up to tell me he thought I could do well in the field. I was pretty shocked, I asked him what his basis for saying that was. He essentially said he thought I could have handled the case on my own, and well. I was surprised to find out what I had been doing was what lawyers do (and all this time I thought it was an intellectual profession!).

So, in 2005, I used the settlement funds as seed money for law school. I currently live in Sacramento, CA and attend the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law. I will be graduating in December and then take the bar exam in February 2009. It probably comes as no surprise that I am foot loose and fancy free, i.e. single and no kids. Well, unless bikes count as kids, because I have five (and looking to grow).

Well, I guess that about sums it up. Sorry so long, but it is hard to put eighteen or so years into just a few sentences.

Best,
Jeff Jewett

PS – The last few years I have been throwing a kid- and family-friendly New Year’s Eve party at my parent’s house in Redmond, and anyone that has any interest in joining should contact me (916.833.2847 or trijeff@mindspring.com) so we can par-tay like it’s 1991.