
Help Jake bounce back from his truck fire
Donation protected
I'm Jake's partner and stepping in to help him. Jake has been working as a residential carpenter and commercial fisherman for about a decade, give or take. He has been investing his personal income into amassing tools, and his truck. He recently took the leap to get his contractor's license, start a business, and work for himself. The learning curve has been so steep! He came back from the most recent sockeye salmon run in Alaska and decided to invest some money into his truck, his most important tool as an independent general contractor and carpenter, to fix some things he hadn't been able to get to. He paid the mechanic $1800, even though they moved forward with the work before receiving confirmation from him. He picked his truck up on Tuesday after a week. Saturday afternoon, as he was getting off the highway, he noticed smoke. Opening the hood, he saw flames right where they had been working, around the gear box. The flames ignited and within 5 minutes his truck was burned to the crisp.
Jake is physically ok, as he watched his truck, what he's worked so hard for, burn from afar. But he's having a hard time seeing a path forward for his business with this set back.
The auto insurance came through with their settlement and he will be able to pay to replace the truck, but he estimates that he lost $2000-3000 worth of hand tools (I took some pictures of the aftermath), not including the $1800 he spent on repairs.
In addition, this could not come at worse timing. We are in the process of buying a house and moving. Our new house needs a new roof immediately, and he is going to need to start drumming up work in our new community immediately. He's feeling really stressed out about being able to recover from this, and broken hearted about what that truck meant to him and all that he'd put into it.
Jake is one of the most generous people I know. He has been helpful to so many people in his life, but he never reaches out for help for himself. So I decided to do it for him (with his reluctant agreement).
Please, friends and family - can you pitch in a little to help Jake bounce back from this?
The white stuff here used to be a a bucket in the back seat
Organizer and beneficiary
Heather Feinberg
Organizer
Damascus, OR
Jacob Bedlion
Beneficiary