Bedford CEO jumps to action to help Ukrainian refugees
Mar. 25—Ken Jacobus saw images on TV of thousands of Ukrainian refugees gathered at Warsaw Central train station in Poland trying to escape the horror of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Women and children of all ages were camped out on air mattresses, bean bags and blankets on the hard floor.
He thought he could help.
So the Wilton man booked a one-way flight to Warsaw. His plan was to see whether he could provide hotel rooms to families using his 6 million American Express Marriott Bonvoy credit card loyalty points, which he racked up as CEO of Good Start Packaging in Bedford. The points are worth about $50,000, he said.
His company also agreed to donate up to $100,000.
"I don't know that I had a plan," Jacobus said in a telephone interview Wednesday night. "I came out and just wanted to do something. I was really upset watching the news, so the vision was to see if I could go down to border crossings and pick people up."
Since arriving in Poland on March 11, Jacobus has visited nine border reception centers and helped drive refugees away to various destinations around the country. He joined a growing group of volunteers organizing caravans and has decided not to come back to the U.S. until he gets hotel rooms for 1,000 Ukrainian families. So far, he has helped about 30.
It wasn't an easy sell at first, as many families were looking for long-term accommodations. The first family to accept the offer included kids yelling, "Oh, wow" as they entered their hotel room, according to a post on the blog he has been keeping. He also provides meals.
Besides the train station, sports stadiums and schools have been set up to receive the refugees. Nearly 2 million people have fled to Poland, which does not have a government agency set up for such work.
"The people are extremely generous. They have a real closeness and affinity for people from Ukraine," Jacobus said. "There's been a massive influx of people, and there is just very little support."
Housing options are sparse.
"There is going to be a lot of outside help from other countries if this is going to be a sustainable effort," Jacobus said. "I think the Polish people are doing a really good job with short-term triaging and keeping people safe and feeding them and sheltering them."
Long-term, the country is working to offer health care and resources for finding jobs and schooling.
On one trip, Jacobus picked up three siblings, Alex, Maria, and Kiril. Alex, 12, helped Jacobus make a Spotify playlist of popular Ukrainian music, which Jacobus has come to enjoy. The family's father is a professional soldier, and their mother has been volunteering. They haven't heard from them in two weeks. Problems have been reported with cellphone networks.
"I just spent one of the most meaningful four hours of my life driving them up from the border to Warsaw to meet with their grandmother, who just flew in from Spain to get them," Jacobus wrote.
In seeing the need, he says he feels for many of the people he's met. His days are long, with no typical rhythm to them. But the trips are becoming more organized as people catch on to what they're doing.
The stories he hears are heartbreaking.
On his sixth trip, he picked up a family of six, including the parents, three children and a grandmother. During their drive, the grandmother heard her apartment building was destroyed by a bomb.
"She was pretty upset, after all she lost everything (except family of course)," he wrote in his blog. "For once, I would be glad for the language barrier we'd have on the trip together because well, there are no words."
One young family with two children had just spent 12 days living in a "freezing cold bomb shelter."
Many of the people just need a place to stay for a few nights as they head to the airport to meet family in other countries.
Jacobus left a career in Silicon Valley to found Good Start Packaging in 2009. The company makes compostable takeout food containers from renewable plant-based materials like corn, wheat fiber and sugarcane.
He accumulated the loyalty points using credit cards. Often, he uses the points to take his wife and two sons on vacation.
"It is more than we need," Jacobus said. "This is a crisis and we wanted to do something. They were just sitting there not being used."
He is hoping others join the effort.
"If we as individuals, companies and governments don't step up in a big way and donate our time and money to help alleviate this incredible injustice, we will have an even bigger humanitarian crisis on our hands," he said in a video post.
