$10 For Jumping Jack Flash College Scholarship!!

For Jack Flash Smevik, organized by Jack Flash and Leslie Carter

We are on a mission to inspire 6,000 people to donate $10 each!

Today we celebrate Jack Flash, worthy of the epic song he was named for – Jumping Jack Flash by the Rolling Stones . The anthem plays out in real time as he is doing everything he can to get to the best college to support his talents and temperament and fulfil his dream of becoming an Electrical Engineer! Jack’s goal is to combine his aptitude for math and physics with his creativity and his desire to engineer solutions that will help uplift society and solve complex problems facing the world. Wonderfully, he was accepted into the College of Engineering at Cal Poly SLO , one of the best schools for engineering on the West Coast! An absolute GAS! GAS! GAS! But oh, how he howled in the driving rain when he discovered the high cost of going to this exceptional College, which without help, is financially out of reach for him!

We are seeking 6,000 people to donate $10 each! Jack’s campaign goal is to raise 25% of the cost to attend as an undergraduate; the rest will be paid for with hard work by him, his parents, and undoubtedly student loans. Jack is grateful for all the help he’s received and will receive on this journey. We would not be here on GoFundMe making a plea if we did not have significant hardship and challenges, but since this appeal is very public (and hopefully going viral!) we don’t want Jack’s identity to be about adversity, but rather embracing the moment and going for your dreams! Please learn more about where your $10 investment will go:

Jack has excelled in academics, music, work, and so many other areas in life. He applied to colleges with a 4.09 GPA, a 1510 SAT score, Junior year AP exams scores Calculus AB - 5, Computer Science - 5, Language - 5, Physics - 4 (all while holding down a McDonalds job 20 hours a week!). He’s been a member of the National Honor Society for five years and as a Senior is continuing his STEM focus and will soon be taking more AP exams for Statistics, Environmental Science, and Calculus BC.

Jack’s academic achievements have also been punctuated by his love for music. He’s learned and performed on piano, clarinet, Bari Saxophone, Alto Saxophone, electric keyboards and Keytar. As a young musician, he recruited his friends to form a rock band called "the Good Ideas" (check him out on keyboards here). Through hard work and practice they became so good they played professional shows for city festivals, charity benefits, and several school assemblies. Unfortunately, the pandemic derailed the rock band, but Jack kept at it, continuing in early morning Jazz Band throughout both junior high and high school, performing in Concert and Wind Ensemble Bands, and donning the Scottish uniform to perform in Marching Band at football games, assemblies, and parades.

As a Junior, Jack participated in the YMCA’s Teen Leadership Development Institute where he learned skills he leveraged to become an energetic and empathetic day camp leader for our city's day camp program, working full time last summer serving youth ages 5-11. He has also worked for the camps during all of his school breaks as a Senior and will be leading youth in day camps again full-time this summer before he starts college. Jack is a natural working with youth and loves engaging with them so much he says it does not feel like “work,” but rather a privilege!

Jack is service minded and in addition to volunteering at PTA events, he served as a camp counselor this year for his local elementary school's three-day annual 5th grade Environment Education Camp. As elected homecoming royalty, he visited elementary and middle schools in the area serving as a role model and inviting young students and their families to participate in the festivities. Jack is currently organizing a Blood Drive and when the details are completed will post links to that effort here.

Jack’s campaign goal is to raise 25% of the cost to attend the best undergraduate Engineering College he can (Cal Poly!) Here’s how you can help:

• Click the Donate Now button and give $10

• Really important - click the Share button now and forward the campaign to your friends and all your social networks and encourage them to also donate $10 each. Help us reach 6,000 donors.

• Consider donating to a blood drive Jack is organizing – link to be posted as soon as details are finalized.

**Optional Reading**

If you would like to know why Jack was given the name Jack Flash (and his sister, Ruby Tuesday), feel free to continue reading the backstory below and Take a peek into the mind of a Fanatic Rolling Stones fan!!

At 14 Jack’s mom was new to her junior high and attended the first pep assembly where members of the football team were announced to mild applause. As the team manager was introduced, a skinny kid with long blond hair strutted across the stage with arms held high as cheering erupted from the stands. A large, embroidered Rolling Stones tongue logo practically jumped out of the back of his jean jacket. Who was this small skinny kid with such extraordinary confidence? With an instant crush, she immediately needed to know more about the Rolling Stones.

An after- school visit to the public library yielded loans of several Rolling Stones albums along with the 351-page tome “Rolling Stones: An Unauthorized Biography in Words, Photographs, and Music” by David Dalton.

The public library loans proved prescient.

Music was the force already fueling her world, so discovering the sheer magnitude and brilliance of the Rolling Stones catalog transformed her simple curiosity into conversion, baptism, and ultimately obsession. The range of the Stones musical output - alternating rawness with intricate depth, from powerful energetic riffs to stripped down melodic pleas, to songs with so many musical layers it carried her off into a multi-sonic experience, and with lyrics flaunting arrogance, inciting rebellion, yet revealing poetry, literary inspiration. Timeless anthems and vulnerable serenades.

While the music enthralled her, the skilled prose of author David Dalton, preeminent rock biographer, captured the essence of the Stones both collectively and individually with storytelling so vivid it transported her imagination to another world and ignited a fascination with the generation before her time. Oh, to have been born a decade earlier and experienced the 60’s as a teenager in real time when the British music scene was fresh and exploding!

It was six years before Jack’s mom could see the Rolling Stones live. October 14, at the Kingdome, with her $16 general admission ticket (face value!) she worked her way through a sea of throbbing sweating bodies, finally reaching the foot of the stage. Momentum built as bodies swayed and pushed, halted only by the attention-grabbing opening bars of Duke Ellington's "Take The A Train." The whole stadium now vibrating from floor to ceiling, the stage curtain suddenly parts to electrifying screams… “Thank you very very much for waiting, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WOULD YOU WELCOME PLEASE, THE ROLLING STONES!!!” Keith, Ronnie, Charlie and Bill suddenly appear as Jagger explodes on to the stage to the pounding opening riff of Under My Thumb. Excitement becomes a flood of tears as she experienced the most exhilarating and magical moments of her existence to date!

Two Seattle concerts were followed by a brief visit (her first ever airplane ride) that Fall to New York City to see the Stones twice at Madison Square Garden, made possible by couch surfing at a friend’s college dorm and paying $75 each for scalped tickets. The next summer Jack’s mom’s love for the Stones music transformed her life as a grocery store checker, taking out a loan from the store’s credit union to attend her “College of Rolling Stones” -- a three week whirlwind of backpacking Europe to experience Rolling Stones shows in Germany, Spain, and Switzerland, staying at youth hostels and making lifelong European friends (shout out to Rick Steve’s first edition of “Europe Through the Back Door ” and the classes he taught at a motel off of I-5 in the U-District!). It was that summer in Europe following the Rolling Stones that Jack’s mom discovered her passion for language, art, culture, and history, subsequently leading to her “real” college journey, ultimately earning a B.A. in International Relations and learning French and Spanish.

Many, many, years later, Jack’s mom finally got the courage to live out her dreams to perform the Rolling Stones on stage herself. Before Jack was born, she put together and fronted an all-girl Rolling Stones cover band called Ruby Tuesday. They played at venues all over the Seattle region - the Sunset, Ballard Firehouse, Rendezvous, Larry’s in Pioneer Square, Rocksport, Waldos, Johnny’s, the Royal Bear, and other private parties. She met Jack’s Dad, also a musician, while he was performing at Paul Allen’s EMP (now the Museum of Pop Culture - MoPop). It was a no-brainer that when they had children, they would name them Jack Flash & Ruby Tuesday!

Jack’s mom is librarian now, at a public library, focusing on serving children and teens. Ever present in her mind is the day her 14-year-old self went in to a Public Library and left with a treasure trove of loans that ignited a passion and sparked a lifetime of adventure and joy!

Now it's Jack Flash's opportunity to follow his passion for math and physics and create a joyful College adventure leading to a degree in Electrical Engineering. It's his goal attend Cal Poly SLO where the motto is Learn by Doing Help him live out the rock anthem he was named after – Jumping Jack Flash by the Rolling Stones- the electrifying riff and chorus that embodies the human spirit’s ability to overcome, not only survive, but to triumph – “IT’S ALRIGHT NOW, IN FACT IT’S A GAS, I’M JUMPING JACK FLASH IT’S A GAS! GAS! GAS!”

Thank you for following this campaign and donating to help Jack Flash achieve his dream of going to College and earning a degree in Engineering! We hope our stories inspire you to forward the campaign to 5,999 of your closest friends and family and all your networks! Thank you for helping this go viral!!!!

The Struggle. Transcendence. Victory!