The lawyers told him that he would never have to worry about money in his life. Jamie Cap was still just a kid then. What did he know?
They told him the settlement from his lawsuit — which did not include a cost-of-living increase — would take care of his medical expenses. They told him his hometown would have fundraisers in his honor forever after he was paralyzed making a tackle in a high school football game.
They told him that good people always would rally around him, and facing a lifetime of need as a quadriplegic, he wanted to believe them. He had to believe them.
Those lawyers, Cap said, stood next to the hospital bed where he spent most of his days in his Manville home and encouraged him to sign a bunch of documents. He knew his family needed the money, that his parents had taken out a mortgage on the house to pay his bills. He didn’t have any other options. He had to hold the pen in his mouth to sign.
That was May 1984, four and a half years after one tackle on a muddy field in Bound Brook as a high school junior had changed his life. Now, nearly four decades later, he sits in a wheelchair in that same room that his father built for him over an inground swimming pool.
He apologizes to visitors about the mess that surrounds him in the single-story ranch home, but who would come to clean up?
The hydraulic lift suspended over the bed, the only way to get him up in the morning, is so old that it’s no longer repairable. The 17-year-old wheelchair accessible van in the driveway outside needs new shocks and struts. He already owes tens of thousands of dollars to friends who have helped him in the past, and the $4,166.66 he receives monthly from that settlement barely pays his mounting bills.
His mother, Mary, died in 2018, and now Cap doesn’t have a reliable caretaker at night. He said he has often had to call 911 to have the cops wake his brother, who has his own health issues, when he needs to be turned in his bed. At least that doesn’t cost him anything.
The community still helps with the occasional fundraiser, but Cap said many of the people who knew him best have died or left town. The others don’t come around much anymore.
“People have their lives,” Cap said. “I understand that. They have their own family and kids. They’ve moved on.”
For most young athletes who suffer catastrophic injuries, the first months and years that follow include an outpouring of emotional and financial backing. Some, such as former Rutgers football player Eric LeGrand, can build a financial cushion with smart planning and a network of people that they can lean on long after the memories of their on-the-field accidents begin to fade.
They are the fortunate ones.
Cap, now 60, is an example of what happens when an athlete doesn’t have that long-term support. He worries that the day is coming when he’ll be put in a nursing home and lose what little independence he has left — or, worse, that a lack of care will lead to a swift deterioration of his health.
A lifelong Giants fan, who is sustained in the fall by watching his favorite team and participating in his fantasy football league, he fears that he won’t live to see next season.
“I don’t want to give up. I’ve got a lot of life left in me,” he said. “But this is my last stand.”
Cap has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money in hopes of getting more care, just one of his many Hail Mary passes as he looks for help. His friends, the handful that still stay in touch, want to help but are at a loss. They know another fundraiser will help for a while, but worry that it won’t make a dramatic long-term change to Cap’s circumstances.
“Jamie is, by far, the toughest human being I’ve ever met,” said Joe Infante, a high school friend who has tried to help Cap in the past. “The things that he’s been through in his life, most of us couldn’t have survived even one or two of them.”
Infante has reached the same morose conclusion as many of his friends. The will to survive that has allowed Cap to see his 60th birthday is also what has put him in this unenviable situation today with few reliable caregivers and dwindling resources. Mark Nipps, another friend, was blunt:
“Nobody expected him to live this long.”
A MUDDY FIELD, A SWOLLEN ANKLE
It was Nov. 4, 1979, the same day more than 50 Americans were taken hostage in Iran. Cap was 16 and had just started dating a classmate he called “the prettiest girl in the school.” He was a handsome kid, too, with high cheekbones and chin-length brown hair that he parted down the middle. He hadn’t played football since Pop Warner but was athletic enough to start at safety that season.
He had injured his ankle in a game the week before, but when his winless team showed up for a rain-delayed game in neighboring Bound Brook, his coaches asked if him could play. He remembers one of them telling him that this was his big chance, and that the team — riding a 30-game losing streak that had dated back several seasons — needed him. (Greg Madlinger, the Manville head coach at the time, called the play that left him paralyzed “terrible, terrible, terrible” but denied that Cap was pressured to play).
Cap had a friend drive him home so he could get his uniform, then dressed in the back of the school bus. The field was so muddy that players were using wooden tongue depressors to scrape the gunk off their cleats. He remembers cleaning them once, only to run a few steps and find them caked again.
It was late in the third quarter when the opposing quarterback took the snap and charged into the line. Cap lowered his head to make the tackle, lost his footing on the sloppy field and collided, headfirst, with the other boy’s legs. He landed on his back with his arms and legs spread in odd directions as if he had fallen out of a building.
“And then there was just dead silence,” said Dawn Douglas, a friend who was there that day.
Cap passed out as the EMTs went to work, but when he woke in the ambulance and saw the look on his mother’s face, he started to panic. He knew he was hurt badly, but he had no idea, as he was brought into what was then called Somerset Medical Center, that this was the first day of a lifelong medical ordeal.
“It felt like I was being electrocuted,” he said. “I remember, when I woke up in intensive care, I didn’t know where I was. I thought I was being kidnapped and was in the bottom of some boat being brought somewhere. The thing about it, it seemed so real.”
He spent the next 13 months in three different hospitals. He can still remember the clank of the surgical tools as they were placed next to his bed in a green towel before a tracheotomy, and the crushing pain from the four bolts screwed in his skull from the neck-stabilizing halo. He had multiple surgeries not only to repair his neck and spine injuries, but on blood clots that formed in one of his legs. He lost nearly half his body weight, dropping to just 80 pounds.
“Every day it seemed like the day took forever to end,” he said. “I would be lying there every night just wishing somebody was there to talk to me.”
When he finally returned to his childhood home on Raritan Avenue in Manville in late 1980, Cap needed round-the-clock care. At first, the health insurance that Cap’s father, John, had from a government job as a mason paid those bills. When that ran out, Cap said his parents took out mortgages on their home, racking up $44,000 in debt over the next three years.
The community tried to help. Friends from Manville High jogged for 24 hours around the school’s track, despite below-freezing conditions, to raise $2,000. The school’s athletic director would show up a couple times a month with checks from other fundraisers. All of that help, though, was not enough to counter the massive costs — and Cap said he soon discovered that the lawyers he hired to reach a settlement with the Manville school district had not properly done their jobs.
The family sued the Manville Board of Education, Madlinger and Riddell, the company that manufactured the helmet he wore that day, and the case went to trial in the spring of 1984. The courtroom in Somerville was silent as a black-and-white film of the play was shown, and legendary Glen Ridge coach Bill Horey testified that Cap’s tackle “wasn’t in accordance with the proper style.”
The case was settled with a deal heralded as a “$3 million payout” in headlines. Robert Colquhoun, the attorney representing the Manville school board, described the settlement as a “charitable contribution in light of the young man’s condition” in The Courier News on May 1, 1984, adding, “I don’t think the jury was impressed with the arguments against us.”
Against us? Wasn’t Cap on their team?
Cap said his family’s attorney, Marvin Lieberman, pressured him into settling the lawsuit. Cap said that much of an initial $247,000 payment went to cover the family’s legal fees, and a pair of $200,000 lump payments that came much later were needed to pay off debts. And, while the settlement included $50,000 a year payout for the rest of his life, it did not include a cost of living increase.
“We trusted the lawyers,” Cap said. “We thought it was a school accident and everyone would be behind us. We were railroaded.”
Lieberman and Colquhoun have since died, and a call to the Manville Board of Education office seeking comment was not returned. Mary Lou Cebula, who was a board member at the time, said she didn’t remember the specifics of the settlement but that “we all believed it was something that (Cap) definitely deserved.”
His parents, especially his mother, handled most of his care. Cap lived as active a life as he could, motoring his wheelchair to AC/DC concerts with friends and hunting for deer with the help of a battery-powered machine operated by a breathing tube.
When Mary Cap died at 87 in 2018, Cap lost his most reliable caregiver. His friends say his situation deteriorated quickly from there.
‘I’M GOING TO FIGHT TO THE END’
These days, Cap spends most of his time in that same house on Raritan Avenue. The homemaking touches from his doting mother are still present in the living room, even if some — like a flannel Christmas stocking still hanging on the fireplace mantle in mid May — are starting to collect dust.
Most of his care is provided by Clyde Ruffini, a specialist from the state-run Personal Assistance Service Program. Ruffini, who makes $13 an hour and has worked with Cap for 21 years, said the health issues are mounting. Cap is diabetic and sometimes has trouble breathing, and blood-pressure spikes could lead to serious problems. Also, Ruffini said Cap is lonely, and that takes a toll on his mental health.
“His friends who used to come around don’t come around much anymore,” Ruffini said. “I think they’re burned out on it. You can’t just be Jamie’s friend and hang out. You have to be somewhat of a caregiver no matter what you do with him. It’s sad.”
Cap has tried everything to get help. He wrote his life story — the heading “PARALYZED!” in boldface font — in 15 single-spaced pages and posted it on social media. He has bombarded LeGrand, the paralyzed former Rutgers football player, with messages on social media. (LeGrand, in an interview, said he would encourage Cap to reach out to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.)
Cap has even attempted to track down Alec Baldwin, whom he met while he was hospitalized in 1980. Baldwin, who was breaking into show business on the daytime soap The Doctors, had been visiting a friend regularly at NYU Medical Center, and Cap said the two sneaked into the labs where students dissected cadavers. Maybe, he reasoned, the famous actor would remember him all these years later. Maybe he would help.
Mostly, though, Cap has leaned on his friends. He has posted the same message on Facebook a half dozen times over the course of the past few months, hoping someone — really, anyone — would agree to move into his basement and help him at night.
Hello--Jamie here--I am in immediate need of somebody who can live in my house and help take care of me in exchange for rent. I prefer somebody that doesn’t drink but if they do somebody that knows how to handle it. If anybody out there is interested please contact me. I’ve been needing this for a while and only hope I can find that needle in a haystack!
“I’d say it’s pretty desperate,” Ruffini said. “His issue is help. He doesn’t know from one day to the next if his brother is going to be there for him or not, and he doesn’t have the money to hire help to replace his brother.
“He doesn’t sleep at night because of all this. He has all these constant worries in his life. The stress is going to wind up killing him.”
Cap said his biggest fear is that he’ll be put into a nursing home and lose what little independence he has left, a concern that is not uncommon among people facing his challenges. Jenn Hatfield, an information specialist for the Reeve Foundation, said that is a crossroads many men and women living with paralysis reach when they outlive their caregivers.
“People tend to be unhappier in a nursing home setting,” Hatfield said. “There is much more success and better mental health outcomes when the care is coming into their homes because they feel like they have more control over their environment.”
Hatfield said the Reeve Foundation has specialists available who can help Cap find resources available in New Jersey and nationally. Often, she said, people living with paralysis won’t connect with Reeve until several decades after their injury because that’s when they first discover that they need help.
The Elks Lodge in Manville named Cap the beneficiary of its annual fundraiser in 2017, and after a big push on social media that included a T-shirt sale, the event attracted hundreds of people and raised about $15,000. That financial shot in the arm was a temporary solution.
“He needs a sustainable plan that says, ‘OK, here’s how he’s going to live for the next five to 10 years,” Infante said, and he knows his opinion on Cap’s only sensible course of action will anger his friend. “I’m just going to be honest: He should be in a facility. There’s no other way. He just won’t go there.”
Carl Leone, another friend, believes part of what keeps Cap alive is his anger — over the injury, over the raw deal in his settlement, and over what he believes are a string of broken promises that have left him spending much of his days looking for help.
Maybe that’s true. Cap knows that he has survived longer than people expected when he was hurt on that muddy football field in 1979. He knows what they say about him and considers those words — nobody expected him to live this long — a badge of honor.
He isn’t about to give up now.
“I’m going to fight right to the end,” he said.
For more information on how to help Jamie Cap, visit his GoFundMe page.
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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com.
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