Our Founder's Story

Hello, my name is Nick Jacobson and I’m the founder, president and chairman of the KEEP US HEALTHY non-profit organization.

What inspired me to start this non-profit organization is my own personal experience while incarcerated that almost cost me my life. I hope my story can help make a change so the next person won’t have to go through what I did.

In 2017, I was detained in Martinez detention facility in Contra Costa County with a broken back from a car crash. They housed me on the top tier where I had to go up and down two flights of stairs every day for recreation time, to use the phone and for Diabetic checks.

I’m a type 1 Diabetic and started getting sick a couple days after my arrival at the jail. I started throwing up, couldn’t eat and felt terrible. My blood glucose was in the range of 400-500 (normal range for an individual is 80-130). The insulin they were giving me was inadequate and had no effect on my blood sugar which is a sign of infection. I told the nurses and triage my issues, plus wrote request slips for help. They denied all help until 11 days later. I started coughing up black blood and had a seizure. That’s when they finally took me to the hospital where I fell into a coma. They told my family to come say good-bye. That I was not going to make it as my organs were shutting down. 

Luckily, I came out of my coma, but still had to fight the infection and blood Sepsis that spread through my whole body. I ended up spending over 6 months in multiple hospitals and had over a dozen procedures and surgeries from heart and lung surgery to back surgery. The infection ate through my spine and I now have a metal spine. They miscalculated my original height when implanting the metal spine, so I am now 2 inches shorter than my original 6ft height. I lost 120lbs of body fat and ultimately almost my life.

I truly want to make a change so the next person and their family don’t have to go through what I and my family went through.